In the game
Mount Kalaga is forest, and Florida forest is full of water. Fans have spent a lot of time guessing which real lakes and rivers the region draws on, and nothing in official material names one or shows one you could identify from shore. This page, then, is a travel idea. If the forest-and-water side of Leonida’s north is what you liked, the biggest lake in north Florida, with a national forest on one shore and old fish camps on the other, is a good place to look for it.
Keep it in that category. Fans have suggested Lake George. Rockstar has not.
The real place
Lake George is a wide place in the St. Johns River, the big river that runs north through Florida to Jacksonville. About eleven miles long and six across, it is the state’s second-largest lake after Okeechobee, shallow, and slightly salty from the springs that feed it, which is why you can catch striped bass and blue crab in a lake seventy miles from the sea. William Bartram wrote it up on his travels in the 1770s, and it has not changed as much as you would think.
The west shore is Ocala National Forest, and Silver Glen Springs, a day-use area inside it, is the spot: a blue spring pool you can swim in and a run out to the lake where boats anchor in clear water on weekends. The east and north shores are fish camp country. Astor, where SR 40 crosses the river, and Georgetown and Welaka further north are villages of docks, bait shops, boat ramps and cabins that have rented to anglers since the 1940s. Some are tidy, some are not, and that is the charm.
One oddity: the Navy has a bombing range in the forest, and parts of the lake are marked off for it. You will see the signs. The detail a GTA fan will recognize is the fish camp itself: a dock, a shed, an old boat and a Coke machine.
Go there
For the south end, take SR 40 to Astor, an hour and a half from Orlando, and follow the river road. For the north, CR 309 runs through Georgetown and Welaka, where the Welaka National Fish Hatchery has a small aquarium worth twenty minutes. For Silver Glen Springs, use SR 19 on the forest side; there is a day-use fee.
Rent a boat or book a guide at any of the camps; bass fishing is the draw, and the camps will tell you honestly what is biting. Cabins are basic and cheap by Florida standards. Food is whatever the camp or the village’s one restaurant is serving, and it will involve catfish.
The honest warning: the lake is shallow and gets rough fast when the wind comes up, and it is big enough that the far shore disappears. Small boats should stay near the edges. Alligators are a given. Cell coverage on the water is poor, and summer afternoons bring lightning.
Nearby
- Ocala National Forest: the pine forest: the lake’s west shore, with Salt Springs and Silver Glen inside it.
- Silver Springs and the glass-bottom boats: the Silver River joins the Ocklawaha, which joins the St. Johns just north of the lake.
Updated September 12, 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us.