Hawkeye Lake

Where Hawkeye Lake is

Hawkeye Lake lies in the District of Thunder Bay.

How deep is Hawkeye Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Hawkeye Lake is 36.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 16 depth contours for Hawkeye 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.

Hawkeye Lake has 3 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Three 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 1907/1 at SW end, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 10 years to 2022. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 7.63 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 4 clarity readings at site 1907/1 give a median Secchi depth of 2.8 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 1907/1

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

Hawkeye Lake Weather

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

Hawkeye Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Hawkeye Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 11.7 meters against its maximum of 36.6.

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 Hawkeye Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Thunder Bay A climate station, 36 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 378 hectares and its mean depth of 11.7 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 Hawkeye Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Hawkeye Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 11 fish species in Hawkeye Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, rainbow trout and brook trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Northern Pikepike
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Burbotcod

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Hawkeye Lake run from 1950 to 1991 and hold 31 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 39,777 released in twelve of the years between 1950 and 1982. The last recorded release was 2,500 brook trout fingerlings in 1991.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for four species taken from Hawkeye Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Fowler Twp., Thunder Bay 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. 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 6

Hawkeye Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 6. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Hawkeye Lake

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

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

Nearby lakes

• Dog Lake10 km away
• Lower Shebandowan Lake54 km away
• Middle Shebandowan Lake61 km away
• Whitefish Lake66 km away

All lakes

Questions about Hawkeye Lake

• How deep is Hawkeye Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 36.6 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Hawkeye Lake?

  Its surface covers 3.8 square kilometers, with 16 kilometers of shoreline.

• What fish are in Hawkeye Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name eleven 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 rainbow trout and brook trout.

• Is the water clear?

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