Lake Temagami

Where Lake Temagami is

Lake Temagami lies in the District of Nipissing, with shoreline in the Municipality of Temagami.

How deep is Lake Temagami?

The deepest mapped contour on Lake Temagami is 73.2 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 347 depth contours recorded during Ontario’s 1969 survey for Lake Temagami.

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 Temagami has 47 Lake Partner monitoring sites. 33 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 2477/2 at S/W Arm, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 22 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 4.56 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 180 clarity readings at site 2477/2 give a median Secchi depth of 6.75 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 2477/2

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

Lake Temagami Weather

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

Lake Temagami weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Lake Temagami as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 18.2 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 18.2 meters places most of Lake Temagami’s volume in that cold layer, which is the condition lake trout and lake whitefish require.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Lake Temagami. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Sudbury Climate climate station, 72 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 20,855 hectares and its mean depth of 18.2 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 Temagami carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Lake Temagami

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 27 fish species in Lake Temagami. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, atlantic salmon and brook 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
• Round Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 77 fish spawning records within the Lake Temagami outline, for three different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout50 areas102.3 ha
• Walleye26 areas471.8 ha
• Smallmouth Bass1 area3.0 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 Temagami run from 1946 to 2005 and hold 73 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 5,221,479 released in fifteen of the years between 1947 and 2005. The last recorded release was 30,000 walleye eyed eggs in 2005.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for nine species taken from Lake Temagami, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Nipissing 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. Where the guide has no result yet for certain contaminants at a location, it sets a precautionary limit of 16 meals a month. 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 11

Lake Temagami lies in Fisheries Management Zone 11. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Lake Temagami

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies. Only live or dead baitfish less than 13 cm (5.1 in.) in length may be used as bait.

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

Lake Temagami Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Lake Temagami 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 Temagami lies within FMZ 11.

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 11 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 Temagami 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

Two access marks are mapped on Lake Temagami.

See also Boat Launches on Ontario Lakes

Islands and names

Lake Temagami contains 1,075 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, 36 of them over 10 hectares and 588 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 85 official names on the water and its islands: 31 islands, 22 bays, one narrows, one point on an island and two rivers. A further 8 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 22

• Amphibolite Bay
• Austin Bay
• Cross Bay
• Devil Bay
• Dewy Bay
• Ferguson Bay
• Granny Bay
• Hammerhandle Bay
• Inlet Bay
• Island Bay
• Kokoko Bay
• Loon Bay
• Muddy Water Bay
• Mule Bay
• Outlet Bay
• Pickerel Bay
• Portage Bay
• Portage Bay
• Shiningwood Bay
• Spawning Bay
• Whitefish Bay
• Witch Bay

Harbours, cuts and narrows 1

• Axe Narrows

Points on the shore 8

• Denedus Point
• Devil Point
• Ferguson Point
• Matagama Point
• Raccoon Point
• Sand Point
• Sealrock Point
• Squirrel Point

Communities on the lake 6

• Temagami
• Bear Island
• Camp Wanapitei
• Wabi-Kon
• Camp White Bear
• Camp Cayuga

Nearby lakes

• Obabika Lake21 km away
• Net Lake22 km away
• Cassels Lake24 km away
• Rabbit Lake28 km away

All lakes

Questions about Lake Temagami

• How deep is Lake Temagami?

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

• How big is Lake Temagami?

  Its surface covers 208.6 square kilometers and it holds 1,075 islands. Of its 1,048 kilometers of shoreline, 629 kilometers is the mainland shore and 419 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Lake Temagami?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 27 species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name atlantic salmon and brook trout.

• Is the water clear?

  All 33 monitoring sites with a phosphorus status are classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.

• Is there a public boat launch?

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