Dryberry Lake

Where Dryberry Lake is

Dryberry Lake lies in the District of Kenora, with shoreline in the Township of Sioux Narrows-Nestor Falls.

How deep is Dryberry Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Dryberry Lake is 103.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 795 depth contours for Dryberry Lake.

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.

Dryberry Lake has 1 Lake Partner monitoring site, which has yet reported phosphorus for the three years the province requires before a status is assigned.

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.

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

Dryberry Lake Weather

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

Dryberry Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Dryberry Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 22.1 meters against its maximum of 103.6.

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 22.1 meters places most of Dryberry Lake’s volume in that cold layer, which is the condition lake trout and lake whitefish require.

No provincial monitoring station records water temperature on Dryberry Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Rawson Lake climate station, 14 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 9,626 hectares and its mean depth of 22.1 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 Dryberry Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Dryberry Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 30 fish species in Dryberry Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name one further species, walleye. It appears in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Muskellungepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 83 fish spawning records within the Dryberry Lake outline, for three different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout58 areas104.1 ha
• Muskellunge22 areas95.6 ha
• Walleye3 areas2.7 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 Dryberry Lake run from 1946 to 1950 and hold 5 releases. Walleye account for most of the fish: 500,000 released in 1950. The last recorded release was 500,000 walleye frys in 1950.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Dryberry Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Kenora 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 5

Dryberry Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 5. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Dryberry Lake

Zone-wide, Smelt may not be used as bait or possessed for use as bait.

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies. Muskellunge: Fish or fish parts may not be used as bait from Jan. 1 – Fri. before 3rd Sat. in May. Muskellunge: Only barbless hooks may be used from Jan. 1 – Fri. before 3rd Sat. in May. Lake Trout: Fish or fish parts may not be used as bait from Jan. 1 – Fri. before 3rd Sat. in May. Lake Trout: Only barbless hooks may be used from Jan. 1 – Fri. before 3rd Sat. in May.

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

Islands and names

Dryberry Lake contains 154 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, twenty of them over 10 hectares and 58 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 4 official names on the water and its islands: 1 island and two bays.

Bays 2

• Northwest Bay
• Point Bay

Nearby lakes

• Kakagi Lake37 km away
• Eagle Lake48 km away
• Black Sturgeon Lakes55 km away
• Lake of the Woods55 km away

All lakes

Questions about Dryberry Lake

• How deep is Dryberry Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 103.6 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Dryberry Lake?

  Its surface covers 96.3 square kilometers and it holds 154 islands. Of its 388 kilometers of shoreline, 287 kilometers is the mainland shore and 101 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Dryberry Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 30 species, among them lake trout, smallmouth bass, northern pike, muskellunge, lake whitefish and yellow perch. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name walleye.