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Lake Gentry

Osceola County, Florida Natural Lake Connected Water
1,799.3 acres20 ft deep1 ramp
Florida Department of Health fish-consumption advisory (June 2021) for Lake Gentry, Osceola County: women of childbearing age and young children should not eat largemouth bass or chain pickerel from this lake. All other individuals should limit largemouth bass to one meal per week and chain pickerel to one meal per month. The contaminant of concern is mercury. The same guide lists black crappie, channel catfish and warmouth at one meal per month for women of childbearing age and young children and one meal per week for everyone else; bluegill at one meal per month and two meals per week respectively; and redear sunfish at one meal per week and two meals per week. — check the current advisory source for updates.
No cyanobacteria or blue-green algae health alert was posted for Lake Gentry as of 30 July 2026. That is a fast-moving category — check Florida DEP’s algal bloom dashboard before you swim or put a dog in the water. — check the current advisory source for updates.
Lake Gentry Access Map 1 ramp
Depth Map → Click markers for details
Boat Ramps on Lake Gentry
Lake Gentry – Smith’s Landing Boat Ramp
Osceola County · Concrete, condition recorded as good to excellent ramp, 2 lanes, 5 trailer spots
Open Motorboat Kayak No launch fee — FWC’s inventory records no fee required at this site. Note that the same record leaves the fee collection method and amount blank, so its fee metadata is incomplete; call Osceola County parks at 407-742-0375 if you want that confirmed before you tow.
View ramp details →
Good to Know
Bait & Tackle
Nothing on the lake. Buy bait in St. Cloud, about seven miles north, before you turn down Lake Gentry Road.
Picnic Areas
Osceola County describes Smith’s Landing as roughly one passive acre with lighting. There is no pavilion, no table and no shade you did not bring.
Fuel on the Water
No marina, no fuel and no fish camp. FWC’s Osceola County boat-ramp inventory lists 26 sites and every one of them on this water is county-owned public access — there is no commercial or private facility on Lake Gentry at all. Come fuelled, watered and self-sufficient.
Fish Species
Largemouth Bass Black Crappie Bluegill Redear Sunfish Warmouth Channel Catfish Chain Pickerel
Connected Waterways

Lake Gentry is its own pool — no lock at either end, so every trip in or out is a tow. Upstream, the canal to Alligator Lake runs through the S-60 spillway, which boats cannot pass; by road it is under two miles from Smith's Landing to the C-Gate 33 ramp. Downstream, Gentry drains through Canoe Creek and two more spillways into Cypress Lake — the water gets there, boats don't, and it bypasses Lake Toho entirely. Lizzie, Coon, Center and Trout sit in the Alligator pool, not Gentry's.

Seasonal Conditions

Lake Gentry ran low through July 2026: 58.5 ft NAVD88 on 19 July, about 1.4 ft below its 59.9 ft regulation schedule, per SFWMD's weekly report (the Corps reads the lake in a different datum — don't subtract the two). Discharge through S-63 was zero. No shortage order covers this basin, and a foot and a half under the line in July is ordinary summer management — but on a lake whose deepest mapped water is about 20 feet it still means flats, bars and stumps closer to your prop and less water on the ramp concrete; walk it before backing down. Through the year this fishes like a shallow, vegetated upper-basin lake: bass and panfish carry it, spring is the peak, summer belongs to the cool ends of the day, and chain pickerel — present here and not on Alligator Lake — will take a spinnerbait on a grass edge. Alligators year-round; afternoon storms build fast, a long way from the only ramp.

Local Watercraft Rules

Plain English Summary

Black bassNo lake-specific rule was found for Lake Gentry. Statewide Florida freshwater regulations apply — check FWC’s current limits before you keep a fish.
AirboatsOsceola County restricts nighttime airboat operation on the Tohopekaliga lakes under Chapter 16 of its Code of Ordinances (§ 16-55); we could not retrieve the current text of that section, so confirm the hours with the county before relying on them. The section does not name Alligator Lake or Lake Gentry. There is also no FWC boating-restricted-area rule for Osceola County in Florida Administrative Code Chapter 68D-24.
No-wake and restricted areasWe have not been able to confirm whether Osceola County designates any no-wake or restricted areas on Alligator Lake or Lake Gentry. Watch for posted signs on the water.
Water-control structuresS-60 sits above the lake in the C-33 canal; S-63 sits about 2,000 feet below the lake in the C-34 canal, with S-63A further downstream. All three are spillways, none is a navigation lock, and there is no lockage service anywhere on this water. Keep well clear of them from upstream.
Fish consumptionFlorida Department of Health advisory (June 2021): for Lake Gentry, women of childbearing age and young children should not eat largemouth bass; all other individuals should limit largemouth bass to one meal per week. Chain pickerel: do not eat / one meal per month. The contaminant of concern is mercury.
Full legal textOfficial boating regulations →
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I run from Lake Gentry up to Alligator Lake, or down to Cypress Lake?
Neither. Both ends of this lake are closed to boats. Upstream, the C-33 canal — the water management district registers it as the Alligator-Gentry Canal — carries the S-60 structure about 3,700 feet below Alligator Lake. S-60 is a spillway: SFWMD lists no navigation lock there, and the district’s 2013 Upper Kissimmee waterway map designates only S-61 and S-65 as “Lock and Spillway.” Downstream, the C-34 canal (registered as Canoe Creek) carries two structures in series, S-63 about 2,000 feet below the lake and S-63A about two and a half miles above Cypress Lake, and SFWMD lists no navigation lock at S-63 or S-63A either. The gauges show why: on 29 July 2026 the Corps of Engineers read Alligator at 62.03 ft NGVD29, Gentry at 59.52 and Cypress at 48.80 — about two and a half feet of head above you and ten and a half below. Trailer to Alligator (under two miles by road from Smith’s Landing) and trailer to Cypress. Do not approach any of the three structures from upstream.
So what water do I actually get from Smith’s Landing?
Lake Gentry and nothing else — about 1,799 acres, all of it yours to run without a structure in the way. That is the whole pool. Lake Lizzie, Coon Lake, Lake Center and Trout Lake all sit above S-60 in the Alligator chain, not here. Cypress Lake, Lake Hatchineha, Lake Kissimmee and Lake Tohopekaliga are all below S-63 and S-63A on the main chain. East Lake Tohopekaliga is on a different arm of the basin and shares no connection with Gentry at all. Anyone who describes this lake as “part of the Kissimmee Chain” is describing hydrology, not navigation — your boat’s day starts and ends on Gentry.
How deep is Lake Gentry?
FWC’s hydroacoustic bathymetry maps a deepest contour of about 20 feet, in the lake’s west end. Most of the lake is a great deal shallower than that, and in July 2026 the whole pool was running roughly a foot and a half below its regulation schedule, so treat 20 feet as the survey-era floor of one small area rather than a depth you will find anywhere convenient. Fish it as a shallow vegetated lake, because that is what it is everywhere except that one western pocket.
Is there a fish camp, a marina or a restroom?
No, no and no. Smith’s Landing is the only public access on Lake Gentry — one county ramp on roughly one passive acre, seven miles south of St. Cloud, with concrete, gravel parking for about five trailers, a light and nothing else. FWC’s complete 26-site Osceola County inventory contains no commercial ramp, private ramp, fish camp or marina on this lake, and no fuel and no bait counter either. There is no toilet at the ramp. The nearest of everything is St. Cloud. This is the more remote of the two ramps on this branch of the chain; bring what you need for the day.
What is chain pickerel doing on the advisory list here?
Living in the lake, which is the point. The Florida Department of Health’s June 2021 consumption guide samples chain pickerel from Lake Gentry and does not sample them from Alligator Lake — a small detail that tells you something real about this water. Pickerel are a fast, toothy, heavily overlooked Florida sport fish that hold on grass edges and eat moving baits. The catch is that they carry the same mercury problem the bass do: women of childbearing age and young children should not eat chain pickerel from Gentry, and everyone else is limited to one meal per month. The bass rows are stricter still — do not eat for that group, one meal per week for everyone else.
How low is the water right now?
As of Sunday 19 July 2026, Lake Gentry stood at 58.5 ft NAVD88, about 1.4 ft below its 59.9 ft regulation schedule on SFWMD’s weekly report, and it was 1.5 ft below a week earlier. The Corps of Engineers, reporting in NGVD29 rather than NAVD88, read the lake at 59.52 ft on 29 July 2026. Two different vertical datums — label each and never do arithmetic across them. Discharge through S-63 was zero in both records. Call it dry conditions: no water shortage order covers this basin. On the water it means shallower flats, more exposed stumps and bars, and less depth at the ramp than the concrete promises.
Are there no-wake zones or an airboat curfew on Gentry?
The airboat answer is clean; the no-wake answer is not. Osceola County restricts nighttime airboat operation on the Tohopekaliga lakes under Chapter 16 of its code (§ 16-55), and that section does not name Alligator Lake or Lake Gentry — confirm current hours with the county. There is no FWC boating-restricted-area rule for Osceola County in Florida Administrative Code Chapter 68D-24. Whether the county designates no-wake or restricted areas on Gentry is unconfirmed, so watch for posted signs on the water.
Does FWC publish a fishing forecast for Lake Gentry?
It does not. FWC does not publish a fishery forecast page for Alligator Lake (Osceola County) or Lake Gentry; its freshwater sites-and-forecasts index covers 61 waters statewide and neither is among them. Nor is Gentry inside FWC’s Kissimmee Chain of Lakes management plan, which covers Tohopekaliga, Cypress, Hatchineha and Kissimmee. That is a regional pattern rather than a verdict on the fishing — East Lake Tohopekaliga, Cypress Lake and Lake Marian are missing from the same index. The best primary information about what swims here is the Department of Health’s June 2021 sampling, because those fish were physically caught and tested.
Scout's Notes
Lake Vibe & Fishing Intel

Lake Gentry is 1,799 acres of Osceola County water with a spillway above it, two below it, and not a lock among them — a pool of its own on the edge of the Kissimmee chain. Its water bypasses Lake Toho entirely, running Canoe Creek into Cypress Lake below the Southport lock — on the chain hydrologically, nowhere near it by boat. Depth is modest: about 20 feet at the deepest mapped contour in the west end, with the rest far shallower. The health department sampled largemouth bass, black crappie, bluegill, redear, warmouth, channel catfish and chain pickerel here — and the pickerel are the tell, present in Gentry and not in Alligator Lake two miles up the canal.

Come here on purpose. Smith's Landing, seven miles south of St. Cloud, is the only access: two concrete lanes, gravel parking for about five trailers, gated sunrise to sunset — why this lake stays quiet when the Toho ramps back up. Launch early, fish the grass edges and wind-blown banks, and work the west end for the deeper water; throw something moving along the grass for the pickerel, because nobody else will. No dock is confirmed, so plan to hand-launch off the concrete. Mind the mercury advisory — bass are off the menu for women of childbearing age and young children, one meal per week for everyone else. And whatever you can see from the water is all you get today: Alligator Lake is a two-mile tow, Cypress a longer one.

Sources: SFWMD Works of the District canal and structure register (C-33 Alligator-Gentry Canal, C-34 Canoe Creek, and the registered locations of S-60, S-63 and S-63A), SFWMD Guide to the Kissimmee Waterway (printed September 2008), SFWMD Upper Kissimmee waterway map (2013) and current navigation lock list, SFWMD Weekly Environmental Conditions & Operations Report dated 22 July 2026 (Table KB-1, stages of 19 July 2026, NAVD88), USACE Jacksonville District Kissimmee daily report KSSDaily 29 July 2026 (ft-NGVD29), USGS National Map NHD waterbody layer (Lake Gentry polygon extent and area, GNIS 00283023), FWC Bathymetry of Select Lakes in Florida (hydroacoustic contours, deepest contour 20 ft in the lake’s west end), FWC Florida Boat Ramp Inventory row OS00260ES (a 2009 survey for fees, hours, lanes and amenities), Osceola County parks-facilities page for the Lake Gentry / Smith’s Landing site, FWC freshwater sites-and-forecasts index (61 sites, retrieved 30 July 2026), Osceola County Code § 16-55, Florida Administrative Code Chapter 68D-24, Florida Department of Health “Your Guide to Eating Fish Caught in Florida,” June 2021 (v2).
Connected Lakes
Alligator LakeConnectedCypress LakeConnected

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