Calabogie Lake

Where Calabogie Lake is

Calabogie Lake lies in the County of Renfrew, within the Township of Greater Madawaska.

How deep is Calabogie Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Calabogie Lake is 24.4 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 22 depth contours for Calabogie Lake.

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 a water sample each spring for phosphorus analysis and measure water clarity through the summer with a Secchi disk.

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 spring phosphorus. Below 10 micrograms per litre is oligotrophic: clear water and low algae. From 10 to 20 is mesotrophic: moderately productive water, with more algae and weed growth than an oligotrophic lake but rarely a bloom. Above 20 is eutrophic: nutrient-rich water, prone to algal blooms and low oxygen at depth.

A Secchi disk is a 20 centimeter 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.

Calabogie Lake has 6 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Four have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. Three of those sites are classified oligotrophic and one mesotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 691/6 at South West, deep spot, sampled over 10 springs to 2024. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 8.35 micrograms per litre, within the oligotrophic band, which extends to 10. The site’s 46 clarity readings give a median Secchi depth of 3.5 meters.

Fish in Calabogie Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name one fish species in Calabogie Lake: northern pike. The province classes the lake as cool water. The record took effect on 15 October 2010, and it compiles what field biologists had reported by then. The province’s other records for the lake name nine further species, among them walleye, cisco and smallmouth bass. They appear in the records below.

Seven of the ten species in the province’s records

• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Black Crappiesunfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 3 fish spawning records within the Calabogie Lake outline: 3 walleye spawning areas covering 9.54 hectares. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Walleye3 areas9.5 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 Calabogie Lake run from 1946 to 2000 and hold 47 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 8,485,088 released in eighteen of the years between 1946 and 2000. The last recorded release was 32,000 walleye fingerlings in 2000.

The province’s current stocking programme, recorded from 2016, lists no release into Calabogie Lake.

Eating the fish

The 2025 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for eight species taken from Calabogie Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Blithfield & Bagot Twps., Renfrew Co. Each figure below is the most meals a month the guide advises for a fish of that length. The advice 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

Calabogie Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 15. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone. Zone 15 covers central Ontario from Georgian Bay to the Ottawa River, bounded to the north by the Pickerel River, Highway 522 and the northern edge of Algonquin Park. It takes in Parry Sound, Huntsville, Bracebridge, Bancroft, Pembroke and Renfrew, and the whole of Algonquin Provincial Park. 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.

The figures are the number of fish an angler may catch and keep in a day and have in possession, under a sport fishing licence and under a conservation licence. The rows are the whole zone’s, and they apply to every lake in it.

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

Calabogie Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Calabogie Lake must be removed by March 31. Calabogie Lake lies in fisheries management zone 15, one of the twenty zones Ontario sets its fishing rules by, and one removal date applies across the whole zone.

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 zone 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 conditions

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

Islands and names

Calabogie Lake contains 15 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, zero of them over 10 hectares and nine under a tenth of a hectare. Ten of them lie inside wetlands mapped in the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset. The largest of these, at 2.2 hectares, falls inside the Grassy Bay wetland.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 10 official names on the water and its islands: 2 islands and eight bays. A further 4 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 8

• Black Bay
• Camerons Bay
• Grassy Bay
• Legrees Bay
• Little Sand Bay
• McNeelys Bay
• Nettletons Bay
• Sand Bay

Points on the shore 4

• Barnets Point
• Bluff Point
• Donnellys Point
• Eagle Point

Nearby lakes

• White Lake18 km away
• Black Donald Lake18 km away
• Constant Lake23 km away
• Centennial Lake28 km away

All lakes

Questions about Calabogie Lake

• How deep is Calabogie Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 24.4 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Calabogie Lake?

  Its surface covers 13.6 square kilometers and it holds 15 islands. Of its 40 kilometers of shoreline, 37 kilometers is the mainland shore and 3 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Calabogie Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name one species: northern pike. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name walleye, cisco, smallmouth bass and largemouth bass.