Steenburg Lake

Where Steenburg Lake is

Steenburg Lake lies in the County of Hastings, with shoreline in the Township of Tudor and Cashel and the Township of Limerick.

How deep is Steenburg Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Steenburg Lake is 19.8 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 53 depth contours for Steenburg 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.

Steenburg Lake has 2 Lake Partner monitoring sites. One of them has reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned, and is classified oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 5163/2 at Mid Lake, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 21 years to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 8.8 micrograms per litre, within the oligotrophic band, which extends to 10.

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.

The 47 clarity readings at site 5163/2 give a median Secchi depth of 4.7 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 5163/2

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

Fish in Steenburg Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records list no species for Steenburg Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name four species, among them lake trout, largemouth bass and rock bass. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 1 fish spawning record within the Steenburg Lake outline: 1 lake trout record of under 100 square meters each.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout1 records0 m²

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.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for three species taken from Steenburg Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Tudor & Limerick Twps., Hastings Co. 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 15

Steenburg Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 15. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone. The province describes it as a zone of many natural lake trout and brook trout lakes, with a well-developed road network and moderate angling effort.

Fisheries management zones around Steenburg Lake

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

Steenburg Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Steenburg 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). Steenburg Lake lies within FMZ 15.

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 15 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 In / Out Date

No ice record is kept on Steenburg Lake. The province’s nearest long record covers eight lakes near Dorset, about 108 kilometers away. It holds a date for every winter since 1975, observed by eye and from cameras set on the shore.

On those eight lakes the median date of complete ice cover is December 7 and the median date of complete ice loss is April 20, a median season of 134 days.

The date the ice forms has moved later through the record: a November 26 average across 1971 to 1980, and December 11 across 2011 to 2020. The date it leaves has moved by less than a day each decade over the same period. The two charts below are drawn to one scale of 26 days, so they can be read against each other.

Ice in date (eight lakes near Dorset, ON)

Ice out date (eight lakes near Dorset, ON)

Ice conditions

No public record reports the thickness or the condition of the ice on Steenburg 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

Islands and names

Steenburg Lake contains eight islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, zero of them over 10 hectares and three under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 6 official names on the water and its islands: 4 islands and two bays. A further 1 named point stands on the mainland shore.

Bays 2

• Adam's Bay
• Austin's Bay

Points on the shore 1

• Sunset Point

Nearby lakes

• Wollaston Lake12 km away
• Chandos Lake25 km away
• Cordova Lake30 km away
• Kasshabog Lake30 km away

All lakes

Questions about Steenburg Lake

• How deep is Steenburg Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 19.8 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Steenburg Lake?

  Its surface covers 2.9 square kilometers and it holds 8 islands. Of its 20 kilometers of shoreline, 17 kilometers is the mainland shore and 3 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• Is the water clear?

  The one monitoring site with a phosphorus status is classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.