Lake Rousseau

Lake Rousseau is a reservoir on the Withlacoochee River in Florida. It lies where Levy, Marion and Citrus counties meet. The lake formed in 1909 when the original Inglis Dam was finished to support the area's phosphate industry. Florida Power Corporation used the dam for hydropower until 1965, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers began building the Cross Florida Barge Canal. A lock and channel for that project, which is now inactive, were completed in 1969. A 1977 USGS study described the lake as about 11 miles long, covering about 4,000 acres and holding about 34,000 acre-feet at a normal pool of 27.5 feet above sea level. More recent sources give smaller areas: about 3,700 acres on Wikipedia and 2,696 acres in the University of South Florida Water Atlas. The Rainbow River also feeds the lake. The Inglis Main Dam is the larger of the lake's two spillway structures.

The Inglis Dam & Island Recreation Area, on the Cross Florida Greenway, has a boat ramp on the upstream, Lake Rousseau side of the Main Dam. A second ramp below the dam reaches about 1.5 miles of the old Withlacoochee River channel. Citrus County Parks & Recreation runs the Goldendale Boat Ramp at 12199 N. Goldendale Avenue in Dunnellon, which reaches the lake's "backwaters." Levy County has the Rest Haven Shores (Kitty Lane) ramp near Inglis. Much of the lake is full of stumps. Only the river channel, which Greenway staff maintain, and the side channels along the south shore, which Citrus County maintains, are mostly clear. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) periodically treats invasive hydrilla on the lake.

The FWC describes the lake as full of cypress trees, pennywort islands and sometimes hydrilla. It supports bluegill, redear sunfish, catfish, black crappie and largemouth bass. Anglers divide it into the deeper river channel and the "flats," or backwaters.