Kukagami Lake

Where Kukagami Lake is

Kukagami Lake lies in the District of Sudbury, with shoreline in the City of Greater Sudbury.

How deep is Kukagami Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Kukagami Lake is 54.9 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 105 depth contours for Kukagami 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.

Kukagami Lake has 7 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Two 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 2369/1 at Deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 19 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 5.15 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 90 clarity readings at site 2369/1 give a median Secchi depth of 7.1 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 2369/1

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

Kukagami Lake Weather

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

Kukagami Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Kukagami Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 14.4 meters against its maximum of 54.9.

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 Kukagami Lake. 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, 22 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 1,852 hectares and its mean depth of 14.4 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 Kukagami Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Kukagami Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 17 fish species in Kukagami Lake.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Lake Whitefishtrout and whitefish
• Ciscotrout and whitefish
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Stocking history

Ontario’s stocking records for Kukagami Lake run from 1950 to 1988 and hold 23 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 88,865 released in fourteen of the years between 1950 and 1988. The last recorded release was 6,000 lake trout yearlings in 1988.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for four species taken from Kukagami Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Kelly & Davis Twps., Sudbury 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 10

Kukagami Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 10. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Kukagami Lake

Where a row reads zone-wide, the zone’s own season or limit above applies.

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

Kukagami Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Kukagami 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). Kukagami Lake lies within FMZ 10.

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 10 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 Kukagami 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 and When the Lakes Will Freeze This Winter

Islands and names

Kukagami Lake contains 144 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, three of them over 10 hectares and 81 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 6 official names on the water and its islands: 3 islands and three bays. The register records the origin of one name: Sloan's Island, “After Sloan family who owned the island.”

Bays 3

• Klondike Bay
• Outlet Bay
• Wright's Bay

Nearby lakes

• Wanapitei Lake15 km away
• Obabika Lake38 km away
• Ramsey Lake42 km away
• Richard Lake42 km away

All lakes

Questions about Kukagami Lake

• How deep is Kukagami Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 54.9 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Kukagami Lake?

  Its surface covers 18.5 square kilometers and it holds 144 islands. Of its 130 kilometers of shoreline, 89 kilometers is the mainland shore and 41 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Kukagami Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name seventeen species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, lake whitefish and yellow perch.

• Is the water clear?

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