Little Lake Joseph

Where Little Lake Joseph is

Little Lake Joseph lies in the District Municipality of Muskoka and the District of Parry Sound, with shoreline in the Township of Muskoka Lakes and the Township of Seguin.

How deep is Little Lake Joseph?

Little Lake Joseph reaches a maximum recorded depth of 40.7 meters, determined from 7,881 soundings taken during Ontario’s 2003 survey.

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.

Little Lake Joseph has 4 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 2660/1 at Main Basin-deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 8 years to 2013. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 5.65 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 83 clarity readings at site 2660/1 give a median Secchi depth of 5.5 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 2660/1

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

Fish in Little Lake Joseph

Ontario’s aquatic resource records list no species for Little Lake Joseph. The province’s other records for the lake name two species, lake trout and smallmouth bass. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Smallmouth Basssunfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 62 fish spawning records within the Little Lake Joseph outline, for two different species. Sixty-one are individual nests of a few square meters each, and the other one is a mapped area. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Smallmouth Bass61 nests200 m²
• Lake Trout1 area900 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.

Fisheries Management Zone 15

Little Lake Joseph 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 Little Lake Joseph

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

Little Lake Joseph Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Little Lake Joseph 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). Little Lake Joseph 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 Little Lake Joseph. The province’s nearest long record covers eight lakes near Dorset, about 59 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 Little Lake Joseph 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

Getting on the water

No water access points on Little Lake Joseph are marked in Ontario’s public records.

See also Boat Launches on Ontario Lakes

Islands and names

Little Lake Joseph contains two islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, of 1.6 and 0.1 hectares.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 2 official names on the water and its islands: 1 island and one bay. A further 2 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 1

• School House Bay

Points on the shore 2

• Blair Point
• Sandy Point

Nearby lakes

• Lake Joseph3 km away
• Lake Rosseau7 km away
• Stewart Lake9 km away
• Bass Lake10 km away

All lakes

Questions about Little Lake Joseph

• How deep is Little Lake Joseph?

  Its maximum recorded depth is 40.7 meters, determined during Ontario’s 2003 survey.

• How big is Little Lake Joseph?

  Its surface covers 2.8 square kilometers and it holds 2 islands. Of its 16 kilometers of shoreline, 15 kilometers is the mainland shore and 1 kilometer is the shore of the islands.

• Is the water clear?

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

• Is there a public boat launch?

  No water access points on Little Lake Joseph are marked in Ontario’s public records.