Clear Lake

Where Clear Lake is

Clear Lake lies in the District of Parry Sound, within the Township of Perry.

How deep is Clear Lake?

Clear Lake reaches a maximum recorded depth of 26.9 meters, determined from 1,695 soundings.

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.

Clear Lake has 2 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 oligotrophic.

The longest record is held by site 899/1 at Mid Lake, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 23 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 7.9 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 249 clarity readings at site 899/1 give a median Secchi depth of 5.5 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 899/1

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

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Clear Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 7.9 meters against its maximum of 26.9.

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 Clear Lake. 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

Fish in Clear Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 10 fish species in Clear Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name three further species, lake trout, brook trout and rainbow trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Brook Trouttrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 10 fish spawning records within the Clear Lake outline, for five different species, and all of them are mapped below. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout3 areas500 m²
• Brook Trout3 areas0.9 ha
• White Sucker2 areas800 m²
• Smallmouth Bass1 area0.2 ha
• Rainbow Smelt1 area200 m²

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 Clear Lake run from 1976 to 2015 and hold 20 releases. Splake account for most of the fish: 31,635 released in twelve of the years between 1983 and 2015. The last recorded release was 1,000 splake yearlings in 2015.

Fisheries Management Zone 15

Clear Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 15. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone. 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.

Fisheries management zones around Clear Lake

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

Clear Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Clear Lake 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). Clear Lake lies within FMZ 15.

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 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 In / Out Date

No ice record is kept on Clear Lake. The province’s nearest long record covers eight lakes near Dorset, about 40 kilometers away. It holds a date for every winter since 1975, observed by eye and from cameras set on the shore.

On those eight lakes the median date of complete ice cover is December 7 and the median date of complete ice loss is April 20, a median season of 134 days.

The date the ice forms has moved later through the record: a November 26 average across 1971 to 1980, and December 11 across 2011 to 2020. The date it leaves has moved by less than a day each decade over the same period. The two charts below are drawn to one scale of 26 days, so they can be read against each other.

Ice in date (eight lakes near Dorset, ON)

Ice out date (eight lakes near Dorset, ON)

Ice conditions

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

Islands and names

Clear Lake contains five islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, zero of them over 10 hectares and one under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 3 official names on the water and its islands: 3 islands.

Nearby lakes

• Bay Lake4 km away
• Three Mile Lake11 km away
• Doe Lake12 km away
• Buck Lake14 km away

All lakes

Questions about Clear Lake

• How deep is Clear Lake?

  Its maximum recorded depth is 26.9 meters.

• How big is Clear Lake?

  Its surface covers 1.1 square kilometers and it holds 5 islands. Of its 10 kilometers of shoreline, 8 kilometers is the mainland shore and 2 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Clear Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name ten species, among them smallmouth bass, northern pike and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name lake trout, brook trout and rainbow trout.

• Is the water clear?

  The one monitoring site with a phosphorus status is classified oligotrophic, the clearest of the province’s three bands.