Wellington County, Ontario

Lake Belwood

A six square kilometer reservoir on the Grand River above Fergus, with a deepest charted contour of 12.2 meters from the 1971 survey. The aquatic resource record lists 21 species, and a yellow perch spawning area is mapped.

Surface: 6.1 km²
Shoreline: 26 km
Islands: 1
Charted depth: 12.2 m
Depth contours: 7

All figures are derived from Ontario’s survey records.

Where Lake Belwood is

Lake Belwood lies in the County of Wellington, within the Township of Centre Wellington.

How deep is Lake Belwood?

The deepest mapped contour on Lake Belwood is 12.2 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 7 depth contours for Lake Belwood.

The deepest charted contour on Lake Belwood, 12.2 meters, from the survey of 1 September 1971. The circle marks the centre of that contour, and the water within it is deeper. Of the survey’s seven contours, one is its own shoreline contour and is left off, the outline being the Ontario Hydro Network’s; the other six depth contours are drawn where the province published them, and along the outline where the survey placed them beyond it. Outline from the Ontario Hydro Network. Each contour is labelled with its depth in meters; zoom in where they run close.

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.

Lake Belwood has 1 Lake Partner monitoring site. It has reported phosphorus for the three or more years the province requires before a status is assigned, and is classified eutrophic.

Lake Partner sites on Lake Belwood with a quotable phosphorus record
Site	Location	Years	Last sampled	Classification
7581/1	Mid north/west end	6	2019	eutrophic

The longest record is held by site 7581/1 at Mid north/west end, sampled over 6 springs to 2019. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 26.36 micrograms per litre, within the eutrophic band, which begins at 20. The site’s 69 clarity readings give a median Secchi depth of 1.3 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 7581/1, surface at the top. The thin line through each bar spans the shallowest and deepest reading that year, and the row beneath the years gives the number of readings. Years without readings are blank.

Fish in Lake Belwood

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 21 fish species in Lake Belwood. The province classes the lake as cool water. The record took effect on 31 October 2019, and it compiles what field biologists had reported by then. The province’s other records for the lake name one further species, rainbow trout. It appears in the records below.

Eight of the 22 species in the province’s records

Northern Pikepike
Yellow Perchperch
Smallmouth Basssunfish
Largemouth Basssunfish
Rock Basssunfish
Pumpkinseedsunfish
Brown Bullheadcatfish
Common Carpminnow

The other fourteen species in the province’s records
Family	Species
Trout and whitefish	rainbow trout
Perch	johnny darter x tesselated darter, rainbow darter
Sucker	northern hog sucker, white sucker
Minnow	bluntnose minnow, carps and minnows, common shiner, creek chub, golden shiner, hornyhead chub, northern pearl dace, northern redbelly dace, spottail shiner

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 1 fish spawning record within the Lake Belwood outline: 1 yellow perch spawning area covering 0.16 hectares.

By number of records

By area mapped

Yellow Perch1 area0.2 ha

Spawning records mapped by the province within the Lake Belwood outline. A record under 100 square meters is drawn as a dot; a spawning area is drawn as the outline mapped. One colour per species, the same as the bars and the list above.

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 Belwood run from 1948 to 1987 and hold 18 releases. Rainbow Trout account for most of the fish: 53,650 released in fifteen of the years between 1948 and 1968. The last recorded release was 24 northern pike subadults in 1987.

Fish released into Lake Belwood, 1948 to 1987
Species	Years	Years with a release	Fish released
Rainbow Trout	1948 to 1968	15	53,650
Largemouth Bass	1957 to 1957	1	5,000
Northern Pike	1987 to 1987	1	24

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

Fisheries Management Zone 16

Lake Belwood lies in Fisheries Management Zone 16. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone. Zone 16 is the most southerly inland zone in the province and takes in all of southwestern Ontario, with Toronto, Mississauga, Hamilton, Kitchener-Waterloo and London. The province describes it as a zone of large river systems, with Lake Simcoe and Lake Couchiching its large lakes, carrying important recreational and tourism fisheries under high fishing effort.

Zone 16 seasons and limits, 2026
Species	Open season	Sport licence	Conservation licence
Atlantic Salmon	4th Sat. in Apr. to Sept 30	0	0
Brook Trout	4th Sat. in Apr. – Sept. 30	5	2
Brown Trout	4th Sat. in Apr. – Sept. 30	5	2
Channel Catfish	Open all year	12	6
Crappie	Open all year	30	10
Lake Trout	Jan. 1 – Sept. 30	2	1
Lake Whitefish	Open all year	12	6
Largemouth and Smallmouth Bass or any combination	4th Sat. in June – Nov. 30	6	2
Muskellunge	1st Sat. in June – Dec. 15	1, must be greater than 91 cm (36 in.)	0
Northern Pike	Jan. 1 – Mar. 31 & 2nd Sat. in May – Dec. 31	6	2
Pacific Salmon	4th Sat. in Apr. – Sept. 30	5	2
Rainbow Trout	4th Sat. in Apr. – Sept. 30	2	1
Splake	Open all year	5	2
Sunfish	Open all year	50	25
Walleye and Sauger or any combination	Jan. 1 – Mar. 15 & 2nd Sat. in May – Dec. 31	4, not more than 1 greater than 46 cm (18.1 in.)	2, not more than 1 greater than 46 cm (18.1 in.)
Yellow Perch	Open all year	50	25

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. No waterbody exception names Lake Belwood.

Lake Belwood Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Lake Belwood must be removed by March 15. Lake Belwood lies in fisheries management zone 16, 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 16 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 Belwood on any given day. Ontario publishes ice safety guidance for anyone going out on the ice, at ontario.ca.

Islands and names

Lake Belwood contains one island in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, of 0.2 hectare, none of them named in the province’s register.

Nearby lakes

Conestogo Lake32 km away
Puslinch Lake38 km away
Lake Eugenia64 km away
Lake Simcoe102 km away

All lakes

Questions about Lake Belwood

How deep is Lake Belwood?
Its deepest charted contour is 12.2 meters, and the water within it is deeper.
How big is Lake Belwood?
Its surface covers 6.1 square kilometers, with 26 kilometers of shoreline and 1 islands.
What fish are in Lake Belwood?
Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 21 species, among them smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name rainbow trout.
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.

A print of Lake Belwood

Lake Belwood has not yet been drawn as a print. The lakes drawn so far are on the lake maps page, and a print of Lake Belwood can be requested by email; whether it can be drawn is confirmed before any payment.

Ask about a Lake Belwood print

Looking at a property on Lake Belwood?

Depth and water quality are two records out of many. Our Rural & Cottage Buyer’s Report gathers what the public record holds about one specific address: shore road allowance, road access, wells, flood mapping, Crown land, wetlands and more, read and checked by a person before it is sent.

See what is in the report

What these figures do and do not say

Depth: A depth reading is the distance from the water surface on the day of survey to the lake bottom. Lake levels vary through the season and between years. The depth figure above is the deepest contour charted and is a minimum; the depth within it was not recorded. The figures for Lake Belwood are read from the province’s bathymetry records within the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline of the lake: the deepest figure is the deepest record inside that outline, and the count is every record inside it.
Shoreline and surface: The shoreline figure is the length of the mainland shore and of every island shore added together, measured on the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline of the lake. The surface figure is the area of water inside that outline, less the area of its islands. The provincial outline is mapped to within a few meters of the shore, and a shoreline measured from a coarser map comes out shorter, which is why a figure published elsewhere is often lower.
Survey coverage: Not every survey covered every arm of a lake, and the province’s index does not always record where a survey ended.
Water quality: Each figure belongs to a single monitoring site and not to the lake as a whole. A bay receiving a creek can read differently from open water half a kilometer away. Sites are matched to Lake Belwood by name in the province’s records.
Nearby lakes: Distances are measured between lake centres.
Islands and names: Islands are counted and measured on the Ontario Hydro Network outline; names are the register’s, placed by its own coordinate. The register names islands the outline draws as part of a larger one, and the outline holds islands the register has not named, so the two counts differ. The outline carries some lakes across marsh, so a gap in the marsh is drawn as land, and every such gap is included in the island count. Where the register has not named one and it lies mostly inside a wetland in the province’s Wetland With Significance dataset, the page names the wetland and the table of largest islands leaves it out. Wetland boundaries are mapped at their own scale and can cover a small island whole.
Depth contours: Each contour is drawn where the survey placed it, at the survey’s own positional accuracy. The survey carries its own shoreline, which differs from the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, so a contour near the shore can run to or past the outline. Such a stretch is drawn along the outline, as a drawing convention, and is not the survey’s line there. The contour count in the stat band is the province’s, and it includes the survey’s own shoreline contour, one ring around the mainland and one around each charted island, which the map leaves off; the map’s small print gives the split.
Location: Municipal boundaries are read from the province’s records as published and can lag a boundary change.
Fish: Ontario’s fish records are compilations of existing knowledge from field biologists and do not represent exhaustive inventories. A species that is not listed was not ruled out. The species list carries one date for the whole record and none for any species.
Spawning areas: A spawning area is drawn where the province mapped it, at the province’s stated accuracy, and the record says nothing about how many fish use it in a given year. A nest record is one nest seen on one day; a count of nests is not a count of fish, and a count of records is not a comparison between species. Whether a given piece of work needs an authorization is a determination made by Fisheries and Oceans Canada on the work itself.
Stocking: A stocking record is a release on a date. It says nothing about how many fish survived or about the population in the lake today.
Fishing rules: Seasons and limits are the zone’s, for the year of the dataset the page was built from, and a licence’s own conditions and any waterbody exception apply over them. The province’s regulations summary is the authority.
Ice hut rules: Removal dates and registration rules are set by fisheries management zone and change from time to time. The dates here were read from the province in September 2026. The province’s own fishing regulations are the authority.

Where these figures come from

Depth, shoreline, islands and named places: Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources bathymetry and the Ontario Hydro Network, © King’s Printer for Ontario, Open Government Licence – Ontario.
Phosphorus and water clarity: Ontario Lake Partner Program, Ministry of the Environment, Conservation and Parks, Open Government Licence – Ontario. Extract built 2026-08-09.
Aerial photography: Geospatial Ontario imagery, Open Government Licence – Ontario, released collections only.
Official names: Geographic Names Ontario, Ministry of Natural Resources, Open Government Licence – Ontario. Marinas: Overture Maps Foundation places data, CDLA-Permissive 2.0.
Lake outline and municipal boundaries: Ontario Hydro Network and Ontario municipal boundary records, Ministry of Natural Resources, Open Government Licence – Ontario.
Fish species and thermal regime: Ontario Aquatic Resource Area records. Spawning areas: Ontario Fish Activity Area records. Both Ministry of Natural Resources, Open Government Licence – Ontario.
Stocking: Historical Fish Stocking Data and Fish Stocking Data for Recreational Purposes, Ministry of Natural Resources, Open Government Licence – Ontario.
Seasons and limits: Ontario recreational fishing regulations data, Ministry of Natural Resources, Open Government Licence – Ontario.
Fish plates: Duane Raver, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; Timothy Knepp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service; U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. All public domain.
Ice hut removal dates and registration: Ontario fishing regulations, read September 2026.