Matinenda Lake

Where Matinenda Lake is

Matinenda Lake lies in the District of Algoma, with shoreline in the Town of Blind River.

How deep is Matinenda Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Matinenda Lake is 85.3 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 147 depth contours for Matinenda 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.

Matinenda Lake has 12 Lake Partner monitoring sites. Five 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 3051/3 at Bakers Bay-deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 15 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 4.75 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 85 clarity readings at site 3051/3 give a median Secchi depth of 7.2 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 3051/3

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

Matinenda Lake Weather

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

Matinenda Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Matinenda Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 20.4 meters against its maximum of 85.3.

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 20.4 meters places most of Matinenda 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 Matinenda Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Gore Bay Climate climate station, 61 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 4,135 hectares and its mean depth of 20.4 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 Matinenda Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Matinenda Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 24 fish species in Matinenda Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name one further species, brook trout. 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
• Walleyeperch
• Yellow Perchperch
• Smallmouth Basssunfish
• Largemouth Basssunfish
• Rock Basssunfish
• Pumpkinseedsunfish
• Bluegillsunfish
• Burbotcod
• Brown Bullheadcatfish

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 17 fish spawning records within the Matinenda Lake outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout16 areas120.6 ha
• Smallmouth Bass1 area300 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 Matinenda Lake run from 1946 to 1958 and hold 16 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 72,650 released in six of the years between 1946 and 1958. The last recorded release was 5,650 lake trout yearlings in 1958.

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

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for three species taken from Matinenda Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in Juillette, Timmermans, Scarfe & Mack Twps., Algoma 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

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

Fisheries management zones around Matinenda 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

Matinenda Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Matinenda 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). Matinenda 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 Matinenda 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

Matinenda Lake contains 40 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, two of them over 10 hectares and nineteen under a tenth of a hectare. Graveyard Island, at 97 hectares, is larger than the next ten together, which cover 57.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 24 official names on the water and its islands: 6 islands, eleven bays, one rock, three narrows and two points on islands. A further 5 named points stand on the mainland shore.

Bays 11

• 68 Bay
• Baker's Bay
• Brundage Bay
• Camp 7 Bay
• Crookes Bay
• Fox's Bay
• Merseth's Bay
• Shamas Bay
• Teacher's Bay
• Vezeau's Bay
• Whitman's Bay

Shoals and rocks 1

• Bagi's Rock

Harbours, cuts and narrows 3

• 68 Narrows
• Butterfield Narrows
• Graveyard Narrows

Points on the shore 5

• Allen's Point
• Brown's Point
• Fox Point
• Hamil's Point
• Paradise Point

Nearby lakes

• Chiblow Lake8 km away
• Lauzon Lake22 km away
• Basswood Lake35 km away
• Lake Wolsey70 km away

All lakes

Questions about Matinenda Lake

• How deep is Matinenda Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 85.3 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Matinenda Lake?

  Its surface covers 41.4 square kilometers and it holds 40 islands. Of its 153 kilometers of shoreline, 136 kilometers is the mainland shore and 17 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Matinenda Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 24 species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, largemouth bass, northern pike and lake whitefish. The lake’s spawning, consumption and stocking records also name brook trout.

• Is the water clear?

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