Lake Panache

Where Lake Panache is

Lake Panache lies in the District of Sudbury, with shoreline in the Municipality of Killarney and the City of Greater Sudbury.

How deep is Lake Panache?

The deepest mapped contour on Lake Panache is 54.9 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 251 depth contours for Lake Panache.

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.

Lake Panache has 17 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Nine have reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned. All are classified oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 4234/6 at Stn 1, Stoney Bay, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 17 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 5.71 micrograms per litre, within the oligotrophic band, which extends to 10.

One reading at site 4234/18, 177.5 micrograms per litre on 3 July 2025, is left out of the site’s mean. The province’s published file includes it.

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 55 clarity readings at site 4234/6 give a median Secchi depth of 5.0 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 4234/6

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

Lake Panache Weather

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

Lake Panache weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Lake Panache as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 14.7 meters against its maximum of 54.9.

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 Lake Panache. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Sudbury A climate station, 62 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 8,080 hectares and its mean depth of 14.7 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 Lake Panache carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Lake Panache

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 26 fish species in Lake Panache. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, splake and rainbow trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 23 fish spawning records within the Lake Panache outline, for four different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout11 areas24.6 ha
• Northern Pike6 areas49.4 ha
• Walleye5 areas19.7 ha
• Lake Whitefish1 area1.3 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 Lake Panache run from 1946 to 1989 and hold 58 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 5,054,000 released in seventeen of the years between 1946 and 1989. The last recorded release was 900 walleye fingerlings in 1989.

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

Fisheries Management Zone 10

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

Fisheries management zones around Lake Panache

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

Lake Panache Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Lake Panache 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). Lake Panache 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 Lake Panache 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

Lake Panache contains 211 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, nineteen of them over 10 hectares and 102 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 46 official names on the water and its islands: 26 islands, twelve bays, one narrows and one point on an island. A further 3 named points stand on the mainland shore. The register records the origin of one name: Hurtubise Island, “Island named after previous owner/doctor/senator who owned the island from 1938-1954 (Doctor Joseph Raoul Hurtubise).”

Bays 12

• Archie Bay
• Brown's Bay
• East Bay
• Grassy Bay
• Hunters Bay
• Kimbell's Bay
• Newton's Bay
• Northeast Bay
• Sawmill Bay
• Stony Bay
• Taylor Bay
• West Bay

Harbours, cuts and narrows 1

• Burnt Narrows

Points on the shore 3

• Green Point
• Potato Point
• Virginia Point

Nearby lakes

• Long Lake24 km away
• Fairbank Lake26 km away
• Vermilion Lake32 km away
• Agnew Lake33 km away

All lakes

Questions about Lake Panache

• How deep is Lake Panache?

  Its deepest charted contour is 54.9 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Lake Panache?

  Its surface covers 80.9 square kilometers and it holds 211 islands. Of its 421 kilometers of shoreline, 295 kilometers is the mainland shore and 126 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Lake Panache?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 26 species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike and lake whitefish. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name splake and rainbow trout.

• Is the water clear?

  All nine monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.