Upper Shebandowan Lake

Where Upper Shebandowan Lake is

Upper Shebandowan Lake lies in the District of Thunder Bay.

How deep is Upper Shebandowan Lake?

The deepest mapped contour on Upper Shebandowan Lake is 36.6 meters, and the water within that boundary descends even farther. Ontario’s bathymetry record holds 38 depth contours for Upper Shebandowan 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.

Upper Shebandowan Lake has 3 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 5637/1 at Upper Basin-E-End, 3 mile bay, with phosphorus sampled several times a year between spring and fall over 24 years to 2025. Its long-term mean phosphorus concentration is 8.31 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 145 clarity readings at site 5637/1 give a median Secchi depth of 2.8 meters.

Median Secchi depth by year at site 5637/1

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

Upper Shebandowan Lake Weather

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

Upper Shebandowan Lake weather

Water temperature

Ontario’s aquatic resource records class Upper Shebandowan Lake as a cold-water lake.

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 Upper Shebandowan 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 Cs climate station, 87 kilometers from the lake, or the next nearest station when its record is incomplete, and from the lake’s area of 1,904 hectares and its mean depth. The province’s records give no mean depth for Upper Shebandowan Lake; the model uses 6.2 meters, estimated from the lake’s depth contours.

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 Upper Shebandowan Lake carries the model’s figures for the past weeks and the coming week.

See also Lake Water Temperature in Ontario

Fish in Upper Shebandowan Lake

Ontario’s aquatic resource records name 15 fish species in Upper Shebandowan Lake.

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
• Burbotcod

Spawning areas

Ontario maps 10 fish spawning records within the Upper Shebandowan Lake outline, for two different species, and all of them are mapped below. Every record is recorded as verified and presently suitable, and none is classed as sensitive.

By number of records

By area mapped

• Lake Trout7 areas1.1 ha
• Walleye3 areas148.5 ha

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 6

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

Fisheries management zones around Upper Shebandowan Lake

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

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

Islands and names

Upper Shebandowan Lake contains 100 islands in the Ontario Hydro Network’s outline, two of them over 10 hectares and 47 under a tenth of a hectare.

Official names

Ontario’s geographic names register lists 11 official names on the water and its islands: 6 islands, two bays and one river.

Bays 2

• Sawmill Bay
• Three Mile Bay

Nearby lakes

• Middle Shebandowan Lake14 km away
• Lower Shebandowan Lake21 km away
• Lac des Mille Lacs27 km away
• Eva Lake53 km away

All lakes

Questions about Upper Shebandowan Lake

• How deep is Upper Shebandowan Lake?

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

• How big is Upper Shebandowan Lake?

  Its surface covers 19.0 square kilometers and it holds 100 islands. Of its 117 kilometers of shoreline, 82 kilometers is the mainland shore and 35 kilometers is the shore of the islands.

• What fish are in Upper Shebandowan Lake?

  Ontario’s aquatic resource records name fifteen species, among them lake trout, walleye, smallmouth bass, northern pike, 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.