ONTARIO GREAT LAKES FISHING MAP — LAKES, RIVERS & ST. LAWRENCE
Fishing Hot Spots
From Lake Erie's walleye grounds at Leamington and Pelee Island, Port Dover and Long Point, up the Detroit River to Lake St. Clair, along the Niagara River and Lake Ontario's salmon harbours to the Bay of Quinte, through the Thousand Islands and down the St. Lawrence, and north along Lake Huron to Georgian Bay, Manitoulin Island, Lake Simcoe and the Kawarthas. Tap any star or dot to see what it is and what to fish there.
More map layers
Fishing & access
Marine chart layers
Parks & rules
Safety: these are planning references. Use current official charts, weather and marine alerts and proper safety equipment before heading out.
Lake guides for this map
Month-by-month patterns, fish, ramps and rules for each water:
Fishing Hot Spots by area
Harbours, rivers, bays and lakes. Tap one to fly to it on the map.
Walleye, salmon, bass and muskie on the Great Lakes
Ontario's side of the Great Lakes is one of the best freshwater fisheries on Earth. Lake Erie's western basin, off Leamington and Pelee Island, is famous for walleye, and Port Dover and Long Point for yellow perch. Lake St. Clair is the muskie capital of the world, and the Detroit River fills with spawning walleye every spring. Lake Ontario and Lake Huron have big chinook and coho salmon, lake trout and steelhead, and every fall the rivers such as the Credit, the Ganaraska, the Saugeen and the Sydenham fill with running salmon and trout.
The Bay of Quinte grows giant walleye, and the Thousand Islands and Georgian Bay's 30,000 Islands are bass and muskie water. Lake Simcoe and the Kawartha Lakes are favorites for walleye, bass and, in winter, ice fishing.
Rules: anglers need an Ontario Outdoors Card and fishing licence (residents and visitors). Seasons and limits change by fisheries management zone, and many rivers have fish sanctuaries and special seasons. The Ontario Fishing Regulations Summary has the details.
BigJoe’s gear for Ontario: Great Lakes & St. Lawrence
What BigJoe would bring to fish these waters.
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Map sources & checks
- Coverage
- Ontario: Great Lakes & St. Lawrence. Mapped features come from public datasets and can be incomplete or out of date: a missing reef, ramp or wreck does not mean it is not there.
- Map data
- OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL) — retrieved October 7, 2026
- World Database on Protected Areas (UNEP-WCMC & IUCN), Protected Planet — retrieved October 7, 2026 (license: Protected Planet terms)
- Hot spots
- 64 hot spots, each with its own source (tap any star to see it): OpenStreetMap marina or harbor (24), OpenStreetMap mapped feature (18), point on an OpenStreetMap river or lake line (general location) (9), OpenStreetMap/Nominatim named place (general position, not a pinpoint) (8), OpenStreetMap boat ramp (5).
- Protected areas
- 147 protected areas from the official list above, drawn in dashed red. Fishing rules inside them are set by the managing agency; check with them before you fish.
- Chart layers (Charts button)
- GEBCO ocean depth and OpenSeaMap buoys, lights and markers. GEBCO and OpenSeaMap are useful references, not official navigation charts.
- Weather & tides
- See Weather & Tides for this area: Open-Meteo weather and marine models. Tides here are estimated from a global sea-level model, not official tide tables.
- Dates
- This page last updated October 15, 2026. Each dataset keeps its own retrieval date, shown above.
⚠️ Planning reference only, not for navigation. Use current official charts, weather and marine alerts, and proper safety gear before heading out.
See something wrong or missing? Tell us and we will check it against the source.