Lake Conway Is the Whole Point
Roughly 1,800 acres of clear, connected water — Lake Conway, Little Lake Conway and Lake Gatlin — ringed by the small city that exists to protect it. A profile of the lake itself.
3 minute read
Ask a Belle Isle resident what their city is, and they will point at the water. Lake Conway is not a feature of Belle Isle — it is the reason Belle Isle exists, the asset its founders incorporated a city to protect in 1924, and still the center of daily life on its shores. This is a profile of the lake itself: what it is, how its chain fits together, and how people actually use it.
One chain, several lakes
What locals call Lake Conway is really the Conway Chain of Lakes — roughly 1,800 acres of connected water made up of Lake Conway, Little Lake Conway and Lake Gatlin, joined by canals. The southern portion is Lake Conway proper; Little Lake Conway, whose southern shore sits inside Belle Isle, lies to the north; and Lake Gatlin, a smaller pool of about 68 acres, anchors the western end, reached by canals from Little Lake Conway. Paddling guides describe the chain as four interconnected portions of those named lakes, with typically clear, green water over a hard, sandy bottom — clarity that can exceed 25 feet on good-weather days, with beds of peppergrass, eelgrass and hydrilla scattered offshore.
That clarity shapes the lake’s character. This is not a murky retention pond writ large; it is a spring-clear Florida lake system in the middle of a city, deep in places — soundings around the chain reach roughly 30 feet — and ringed almost entirely by homes, docks and boathouses. More than half of Belle Isle’s total area is water, and most of that water is this chain.
How the lake gets used
Boating is the first language. Belle Isle maintains access through four ramps — Randolph, Perkins, Venetian and Ferncreek — split between city and Orange County jurisdiction, with resident-decal parking at Perkins. Our ramp-by-ramp breakdown is in the Belle Isle boat ramp guide. From those ramps the chain opens into waterskiing and wakeboarding water, cruising canals, and the quieter western reach toward Lake Gatlin.
Fishing is the second language. The chain is one of Orlando’s known largemouth bass fisheries, with bluegill, crappie and chain pickerel also in the mix — the full picture is in our Conway Chain fishing guide. Paddlers, meanwhile, treat the chain as a route: a documented paddle of about 8.9 miles launches from Perkins Ramp and threads the lakes and canals, and Warren Park offers a canoe launch on the shore. Even the lake’s social life is documented in photographs of its fly-in gatherings, when seaplanes have parked along its grassy shores — a reminder that in Belle Isle, every form of transport eventually ends up at the water.
The shore side
For everyone without a hull, the lake is experienced at its edges: the fishing piers and canoe launch at Warren Park, the city’s largest park, and the string of pocket parks and small beaches — Swann, LaBelle, Delia, Peninsular — that the city maintains along the shoreline. Those access points are small by design, and the city is candid that many lack parking and bathrooms. The lake was protected by incorporation, not developed into a waterfront attraction, and a century later it still reads that way.
Place it in the region with the Orlando Top Spots Map and the oddity lands: one of Greater Orlando’s largest lakes, three miles from the airport and five from downtown, ringed by a city of about 7,000 people that exists to keep it a lake. Lake Conway is the whole point of Belle Isle — everything else in this magazine’s coverage of the city is a footnote to it.
Photo: Chris Gent, CC BY-SA, via Flickr — seaplanes over Lake Conway during the lake’s fly-in.
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