Shores are mostly high and steep, surrounded by temperate deciduous forest, with only the southern and northern parts bordered by fields and meadows.

Lake’s surroundings are sparsely populated with several villages located nearby, including Wilamowo, Szymonowo, Szymonówko, Sople and Liksajny.

[1] The commission, which operated after World War II under the Ministry of Public Administration, was tasked with creating toponyms for locations, villages, towns, and cities in the former eastern territories of Germany.

As rivers flowed beneath the retreating glacier, they encountered softer rock, carving out deep channels known as glacial troughs.

The chain of lakes, including Sambód, Ruda Woda, Ilińsk, and Drwęckie, reflects the course of the local post-glacial trough.

The melting glacier deposited layers of clay, sand, and gravel and created sequences of moraine hills, which are visible in the southern part of the lake.

On the opposite shore of the western bay, where the former site once served to store and prepare wood for rafting, a scout camp has been established.

The varying pressure from the ice caused the rivers to carve the lakebed in different directions, creating numerous depressions and shallows[5].

In contrast, the lake reaches its greatest depth about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the southern end, near the village of Szymonówko, where it drops to more than 27 metres (89 ft) below the surface.

[11] The lake is located in the historic region of Pogezania, inhabited from the 5th to the 9th century by Prussian tribes—Baltic peoples who spoke an Indo-European language of the Baltic branch.

[7] The population growth accelerated in the 19th century, supported by the region's economic development, exemplified by the construction of the Oberland Canal, with Lake Ruda Woda becoming its longest natural section.

After World War II, the province of East Prussia ceased to exist, and the areas where the lake is located were incorporated into Poland.

The construction of the canal was a massive hydrotechnical undertaking, fundamentally impacting lake's morphometry, which was the longest natural section of the emerging waterway.

[16] Bernhard Ohlert's account of his multi-day expedition along the Oberland Canal in 1862 describes the consequences of the lowered water level in Lake Ruda Woda.

In front of the forest crown covered with tall, old trees, there is a much lower, differently colored strip of young growth, which obviously emerged only after the partial draining of the lake basin.

[16] Lake Ruda Woda, due to its elongated shape, has been a convenient route for transporting goods since medieval times.

However, the lake was situated outside the Teutonic main waterway network of that era (from Ostróda via the Drwęca River to Toruń, and then along the Vistula to Gdańsk), and thus had only local significance.

[16] On the Stańkowo Peninsula, near the mouth of the Drela Bay, the rafting settlement of Steenkenwalde was established, named in honor of the canal's builder, Georg Jakob Steenke.

Meanwhile, the rapid development of the railway, which took over much of the freight transport, shifted the lake's water traffic to focus primarily on tourism.

His passenger fleet, which included vessels operating on Lake Ruda Woda, consisted of ships such as Seerose (Water Lily), Hertha, Heini, and Konrad.

On October 16, 1964, now tugboat Heini, which had been renamed Biedronka (Ladybug), set out from Ostróda to Czulpa, at the northern end of Lake Ruda Woda.

In 1965-66, five SPJK-type lake and canal passenger ships (Polish: Statek Pasażerski Jeziorowo-Kanałowy) were built at the Kraków River Shipyard, each with a crew of four.

The ships—Kormoran (Cormorant), Łabędź (Swan), Pingwin (Penguin), Birkut (Steppe Eagle), and Marabut (Marabou)—were popularly referred to as "little birds".

In the shallower coastal zones and bays, aquatic plants such as yellow water lilies and European frog-bits are common, with the former being more prevalent.

The forested and coastal areas provide feeding and breeding grounds for numerous bird species, mainly cormorants, swans, and herons (including great egrets), along with members of the grebe, duck, gull, and tern families.

The lake’s fish population is dominated by perch, roach, bream, tench, pike, and zander, with increasingly rare eels also present.