Rice Lake

Where Rice Lake is

Rice Lake lies in the County of Northumberland and the County of Peterborough, with shoreline in the Township of Alnwick/Haldimand, the Township of Hamilton, the Township of Asphodel-Norwood and the Township of Otonabee-South Monaghan.

How deep is Rice Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Rice Lake is 9.0 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 203 depth contours recorded during Ontario’s 1970 survey for Rice 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.

Rice Lake has 6 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 eutrophic.

The longest record is held by site 6920/34 at Stn 34 Spook Is., with phosphorus sampled several times a year between spring and fall over 4 years to 2008. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 23.42 micrograms per litre, within the eutrophic band, which begins at 20.

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 14 clarity readings at site 6920/34 give a median Secchi depth of 1.5 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 6920/34

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

Rice Lake Weather

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

Rice Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Rice Lake as a warm-water lake, with a mean depth of 2.6 meters against its maximum of 9.

A lake separates into layers through the summer where it is deep enough. Sunlight and wind warm and mix the upper few meters, and beneath a band of rapid cooling, the thermocline, the water stays cold. A shallow lake mixes to the bottom instead and warms through, sooner in spring and later into autumn.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Rice Lake. The weather page for Rice Lake carries the LastLake model’s surface water temperature for each day of the coming week. The province’s longest in-water record is kept on eight research lakes near Dorset, sampled since 1976. A reading is taken at the surface, at one meter, at each meter to seven and then every two meters to the bottom, about every two weeks through the open-water season and about monthly under ice. The record holds 5,240 readings at a depth of one meter.

At one meter the eight lakes track one another closely. On a day when several were sampled, the warmest and the coolest lake differed by about one degree in every month of the year, and a 12 meter deep lake and a 37 meter deep lake read within 0.2 degrees of each other from June to October. The weather of the year, and not the lake, sets most of the width of the band below.

Water temperature at a depth of one meter (eight lakes near Dorset, ON)

How depth changes the temperature

The chart below is the province’s record on Harp Lake, 37 meters deep, drawn as the median temperature at each depth for each month over 49 years. In July the water at one meter is 23 degrees, at five meters 15, at seven meters 9, and from 13 meters to the bottom under 6. By October the warm layer has deepened to seven meters and cooled to 11 degrees. In February the whole column sits between 1 and 4 degrees under the ice, coldest at the top.

A shallower lake in the same record warms sooner. Heney Lake, six meters deep, reads about 1.8 degrees warmer than Harp Lake at one meter from January to May, 0.8 degrees warmer from June to August, and the same or cooler from September.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Rice Lake Water Level

Parks Canada measures the level of Rice Lake at a gauge on the lake, on the Trent-Severn Waterway, and posts one reading each weekday. The record below holds every reading since 1 January 2026, set against Parks Canada’s average, highest and lowest level for each day of the year.

Readings are provisional, posted by Parks Canada on weekdays, and are not intended for flood warning.

Fish in Rice Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 36 fish species in Rice Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Northern Pikepike
• Muskellungepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Black Crappiesunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish
• Common Carpminnow
• Lake Sturgeonother

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 101 fish spawning records within the Rice Lake outline, for four different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Smallmouth Bass43 areas24.8 ha
• Muskellunge21 areas37.8 ha
• Largemouth Bass20 areas33.9 ha
• Walleye17 areas3.3 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 Rice Lake run from 1946 to 1990 and hold 164 releases. Muskellunge account for most of the fish: 4,280,789 released in 44 of the years between 1946 and 1990. The last recorded release was 100,000 muskellunge frys in 1990.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for thirteen species taken from Rice Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location off Otonabee River, Peterborough 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 17

Rice Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 17. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Rice Lake

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

Rice Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Rice Lake must be removed by March 1. 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). Rice Lake lies within FMZ 17.

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 17 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 Out Date

The ice has been recorded leaving Rice Lake at Indian River in 34 springs between 1969 and 2002. The median date is April 11. The earliest recorded break-up is February 11 in 1981, and the latest is May 1 in 1972.

Across the 34 recorded springs the date has moved earlier by about 2.9 days each decade.

The record was contributed by Martyn N. Futter to the Global Lake and River Ice Phenology Database. The record only holds the ice-out dates for Rice Lake, and no ice-in date.

Ice out dates for 34 recorded springs between 1969 and 2002

Ice conditions

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

Getting on the water

Five access marks are mapped on Rice Lake.

See also Boat Launches on Ontario Lakes

Islands and names

Rice Lake contains 44 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, eight of them over 10 hectares and fourteen under a tenth of a hectare. Fifteen of them lie mostly inside wetland the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset maps as marsh or open water.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 35 official names on the water and its islands: 22 islands, four bays, two shoals, two points on islands and one river. A further 18 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 4

• Burrison's Bay
• McGregor Bay
• Morrow Bay
• Webb Bay

Shoals and rocks 2

• Hiawatha Shoal
• Sunken Island

Points on the shore 18

• Birdsalls Point
• Cameron Point
• Curtis Point
• Foley Point
• Hatrick Point
• Herkimer Point
• Idylwilde Point
• Jubilee Point
• Ley Point
• Morrow Point
• Picnic Point
• Pine Tree Point
• Plum Point
• Roach Point
• Sager Point
• Sand Point
• Shearer Point
• Wallace Point

Communities on the lake 7

• Bewdley
• Gores Landing
• Harwood
• Hiawatha
• Halstead Beach
• Pengelly Landing
• McCracken Landing

Nearby lakes

• Chemong Lake31 km away
• Clear Lake37 km away
• Buckhorn Lake39 km away
• White Lake39 km away

All lakes

Questions about Rice Lake

• How deep is Rice Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 9 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Rice Lake?

  Its surface covers 92.3 square kilometers and it holds 44 islands. Of its 167 kilometers of shoreline, 121 kilometers is the mainland shore and 46 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Rice Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 36 species, among them walleye, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike, muskellunge and yellow perch.

• Is the water clear?

  The one monitoring site with a phosphorus status is classified eutrophic, the most nutrient-rich of the province’s three bands.

• Is there a public boat launch?

  No boat launch on Rice Lake is marked in the records this page draws on.