Ranger Lake

Where Ranger Lake is

Ranger Lake lies in the District of Algoma.

How deep is Ranger Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Ranger Lake is 73.2 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 79 depth contours for Ranger Lake.

See also Ontario's Largest and Deepest Lakes

Surveyed Depths

Ontario has surveyed the depths of several thousand of its lakes over more than half a century. Later surveys were conducted by boat with satellite positioning and produced hundreds of thousands of soundings per lake. Earlier surveys were charted by running transects across the water and drawing depth contours by hand.

Water quality

Ontario’s Lake Partner Program is a volunteer monitoring network. Participants collect water samples for phosphorus analysis and measure water clarity through the summer with a Secchi disk. Most sites are sampled for phosphorus once a year, in spring, and some several times a year between spring and fall. Phosphorus in many lakes rises through the summer, so the two kinds of average are measured on different bases.

Phosphorus is the nutrient that controls how much algae a lake can grow. A lake with little phosphorus stays clear and supports cold-water fish such as lake trout. As phosphorus rises, algae increase, the water clouds, and oxygen in the deep water falls as the algae decay. The province classifies each monitoring site by its average phosphorus:

• Oligotrophic, below 10 micrograms per litre: clear water and low algae.
• Mesotrophic, from 10 to 20: moderately productive water, with more algae and weed growth than an oligotrophic lake but rarely a bloom.
• Eutrophic, above 20: nutrient-rich water, prone to algal blooms and low oxygen at depth.

Ranger Lake has 1 Lake Partner monitoring site, which has yet reported phosphorus for the three years the province requires before a status is assigned.

A Secchi disk is a white or black-and-white plate lowered on a marked line until it disappears from view. The depth at which it vanishes is the Secchi depth, a direct measure of water clarity. Clearer water gives a deeper reading.

See also Lake Water Quality and Blue-Green Algae in Ontario

Ranger Lake Weather

The weather page for Ranger Lake carries the forecast over the water, wave heights across the lake, and the modelled water temperature.

Ranger Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Ranger Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 21.7 meters against its maximum of 73.2.

A deep lake separates into layers through the summer. Sunlight and wind warm and mix the upper few meters, and beneath a band of rapid cooling, the thermocline, the water stays cold through the whole season. A mean depth of 21.7 meters places most of Ranger Lake’s volume in that cold layer, which is the condition lake trout and lake whitefish require.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Ranger Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Sault Ste Marie A climate station, 86 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 2,335 hectares and its mean depth of 21.7 meters.

Each day’s figure carries the model’s typical error for that month on lakes of the same size. The figure in the chart below is the temperature near the surface, away from the shoreline. Bays, shallows and water deeper below the surface differ in temperature. Temperature is not measured when ice covers the lake. The weather page for Ranger Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Ranger Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 24 fish species in Ranger Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Brook Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Round Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 20 fish spawning records within the Ranger Lake outline: 20 lake trout spawning areas covering 1.83 hectares. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout20 areas1.8 ha

The federal Fisheries Act prohibits the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat without an authorization, so a dock, dredging, infill or shoreline work at a mapped spawning area is reviewed on that basis.

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Ranger Lake run from 1946 to 1993 and hold 35 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 215,200 released in sixteen of the years between 1946 and 1984. The last recorded release was 3,474 brook trout yearlings in 1993.

The province’s record of stocking for recreational fishing, kept from 2016, lists no release into Ranger Lake.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for two species taken from Ranger Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Reilly Twp., Algoma Dist. Each figure below is the most meals a month the guide advises for a fish of that length. Where mercury sets the advice, the figure falls as the fish gets longer, because mercury accumulates over a fish’s life. A zero means the guide advises no meals of that fish at that size.

General population: adultsSensitive population: children under fifteen, women who are or may become pregnant

Fisheries Management Zone 10

Ranger Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 10. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Ranger Lake

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies.

See also Fishing Seasons in Ontario, Zone by Zone and Fish Stocking in Ontario Lakes

Ranger Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Ranger Lake must be removed by March 31. The province sets dates for ice hut removal as a safety measure to ensure huts are removed before thawing occurs. One date applies to an entire fisheries management zone (FMZ). Ranger Lake lies within FMZ 10.

An ice hut must also be removed before the ice breaks up, whether or not that date has passed. The deadline clears huts from the ice ahead of the thaw and does not close the fishing season.

Registration is required in FMZ 10 for an ice hut built of anything other than fabric, and for a fabric tent covering seven square meters or more. Registration is free, and the number is displayed on the outside of the hut.

Ice conditions

No public record reports the thickness or the condition of the ice on Ranger Lake on any given day. Ontario publishes ice safety guidance for anyone going out on the ice, at ontario.ca.

See also Lake Ice in Ontario and When the Lakes Will Freeze This Winter

Islands and names

Ranger Lake contains 27 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, one of them over 10 hectares and fourteen under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 13 official names on the water and its islands: 9 islands and three bays.

Bays 3

• Camp Ten Bay
• Indian Bay
• Vielles Bay

Nearby lakes

• Basswood Lake66 km away
• Chiblow Lake73 km away
• Matinenda Lake75 km away
• Lauzon Lake97 km away

All lakes

Questions about Ranger Lake

• How deep is Ranger Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 73.2 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Ranger Lake?

  Its surface covers 23.3 square kilometers and it holds 27 islands. Of its 76 kilometers of shoreline, 65 kilometers is the mainland shore and 11 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Ranger Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 24 species, among them lake trout, northern pike, lake whitefish and brook trout.