Silver Lake

Where Silver Lake is

Silver Lake lies in the County of Lanark and the County of Frontenac, with shoreline in the Township of Tay Valley and the Township of Central Frontenac.

How deep is Silver Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Silver Lake is 21.9 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 8 depth contours for Silver 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.

Silver Lake has 2 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 4950/1 at Mid Lake, deep spot, with phosphorus sampled once a year over 18 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 6.24 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 102 clarity readings at site 4950/1 give a median Secchi depth of 6.35 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 4950/1

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

Silver Lake Weather

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

Silver Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Silver Lake as a cold-water lake, with a mean depth of 10.5 meters against its maximum of 21.9.

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 Silver Lake. The LastLake model computes the temperature of its surface water for each day from the daily mean air temperature at Environment Canada’s Centreville climate station, 53 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 248 hectares and its mean depth of 10.5 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 Silver Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Silver Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 fish species in Silver Lake. The province’s other records for the lake name two further species, brook trout and brown trout. They appear in the records below.

Popular species in the province’s records

• Lake Trouttrout and whitefish
• Rainbow 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 2 fish spawning records within the Silver Lake outline, for two different species, all of them nests or records of under 100 square meters each. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Walleye1 records0 m²
• Lake Trout1 records0 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 Silver Lake run from 1950 to 2015 and hold 64 releases. Lake Trout account for most of the fish: 190,184 released in 42 of the years between 1950 and 2015. The last recorded release was 5,000 lake trout yearlings in 2015.

Eating the fish

The 2026 Guide to Eating Ontario Fish carries consumption advice for seven species taken from Silver Lake, tested for contaminants at a sampling location in S. Sherbrooke Twp., Lanark Co. 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 18

Silver Lake lies in Fisheries Management Zone 18. Ontario sets its fishing seasons and catch limits by zone.

Fisheries management zones around Silver 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

Silver Lake Ice Fishing

An ice hut on Silver Lake must be removed by March 15. 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). Silver Lake lies within FMZ 18.

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 18 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 Silver 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

Silver Lake contains two islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, of 1.3 and 0.1 hectares, none of them named in the province’s register.

Nearby lakes

• Sharbot Lake11 km away
• Christie Lake13 km away
• Crow Lake14 km away
• Dalhousie Lake16 km away

All lakes

Questions about Silver Lake

• How deep is Silver Lake?

  Its deepest charted contour is 21.9 meters, and the water within it is deeper.

• How big is Silver Lake?

  Its surface covers 2.5 square kilometers, with 11 kilometers of shoreline and 2 islands.

• What fish are in Silver Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 22 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 and brown trout.

• Is the water clear?

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