A Day on Lake St. Clair by Boat
Where to aim the bow on Lake St. Clair: the Metropark sandbar, Clinton River, Nautical Mile, Anchor Bay, the Flats, Gull Island, and the rules that matter.
Updated
Lake St. Clair is small enough to cross in an afternoon and busy enough that you never run out of places to go. From a slip in Harrison Township you can be swimming off a sandbar in ten minutes, tied up for lunch in twenty, or drifting past freighters at the Flats in an hour. Here is the loop locals run over a summer, with the depths and rules that matter.
Trailering? Start with the public launches guide and the boat launch directory. No boat? The rentals and boat clubs guide covers the pontoon rentals and club memberships around the lake.
The Metropark sandbar
The shallow water off Lake St. Clair Metropark at 31300 Metro Parkway is where the season opens. Memorial Day weekend is the first big one: boats anchor off the beach, and people wade between swim platforms. The Macomb County Sheriff's Marine Division patrols from 7 a.m. to midnight starting that weekend and through Labor Day, and a life jacket check is the usual first contact.
The park's eight launch ramps are on Black Creek by the North Marina. A daily vehicle pass is $10 and a boat pass is extra, as of 2026. Black Creek and the marina basin are slow-no wake all the way out.
The Clinton River run to Mount Clemens
The Clinton River empties into the west side of Anchor Bay between two breakwaters, about two miles north of Point Huron. The federal channel is dredged to 8 feet from the mouth up to Mount Clemens, and the mouth was dredged again in May 2025, but the river silts and the low water in 2025 brought a rash of groundings. Read your sounder.
The whole river is slow-no wake, enforced. Mount Clemens is about 7.3 miles upstream, so figure an hour or more each way at idle. The lower river in Harrison Township has three restaurants you can dock at: Bumpers Landing at 31970 N River Rd, North 42 Bar + Grill at MacRay Harbor, and River Rat Restaurant on the south bank.
Bridge clearances above low water datum, per the Coast Pilot:
| Bridge | Clearance |
|---|---|
| Bridgeview Avenue | 21 ft |
| I-94 | 28 ft |
| Market Street | 14 ft |
| Cass Avenue | 20 ft |
| South Broadway | 15 ft |
| Gratiot Avenue | 14 ft (head of navigation) |
Anything with a hardtop or a tower should sort out the 14-foot spans in downtown Mount Clemens before committing. Summer lake levels sit above datum, which lowers clearance, not raises it.
The Nautical Mile
Jefferson between 9 Mile and 10 1/2 Mile in St. Clair Shores packs more marinas into a mile and a half than any other stretch of shoreline on the lake. The canals and the water just off them are slow-no wake. Idle in, tie up, eat. Mike's on the Water is the classic dock-and-dine stop; who else has a courtesy dock is in the waterfront dining by boat guide and the best waterfront restaurants list.
Anchor Bay and New Baltimore
Anchor Bay is the shallow north arm of the lake, and the calmest water when a west wind is stacking chop on the main lake. About 8 feet carries across the bank at the south end of the bay, with the best water on a north-south line just east of the Point Huron buoy; the middle of the bay runs around 10 feet before it shoals toward shore. Frog Creek and the small-craft channels at New Baltimore are slow-no wake.
The dock-and-dine scene up here is covered in the Anchor Bay guide. Fin's Eatery & Spirits on Washington Street is the New Baltimore stop most boats aim for.
The Flats and Harsens Island
The St. Clair River enters the lake through the largest delta in the Great Lakes, and the three main channels, North, Middle, and South, are the highways in. The South Channel is the freighter route. The Middle Channel enters the lake between Dickinson Island and Harsens Island, and it is the direct way into the island's interior canals, Brown's Bar, and Middle Channel Marina, which has a fuel dock.
Sans Souci is the village on the South Channel side. Sans Souci Bar at 3057 S Channel Dr has first-come seawall dockage and fried perch. Strawberry Island is a few minutes by water from Sans Souci and is the quieter swim-and-anchor spot. Big and Little Muscamoot Bay on the island's west side are the headline sandbars: waist-deep, sandy bottom, and home to the Raft Off, when a couple thousand boats tie up in rows on a Saturday in August. In 2025 it moved to Big Muscamoot because low water left Little Muscamoot too thin for a lot of hulls. Walker's Landing near Big Muscamoot sells fuel and snacks.
Roughly three quarters of Harsens Island is DNR wildlife area, slow-no wake, with no personal watercraft launching from its access sites. For the car crowd, Champion's Auto Ferry runs from Algonac around the clock, $16 round trip per car as of 2026, cash on board.
Gull Island
Gull Island sits at the mouth of the South Channel between the bottom of Harsens Island and Ontario's Seaway Island, on the international boundary. It is a pile of Army Corps dredge spoil from the channel work, most of it under water now; what is left is a sandbar shallow enough to walk around. That is why it hosts the Jobbie Nooner, the fourth Friday in June (the 52nd was June 26, 2026), with a second round the first Saturday after Labor Day.
The Coast Guard parks a command barge on site, and both county sheriffs, Clay Township police, CBP, and the RCMP are on the water. The usual tickets: boating while intoxicated, minors in possession, and no life jackets. Michigan's 0.08 limit applies to whoever is at the helm, and the anchorage is a no-wake crawl through rafted boats. On a weekday it is an empty sandbar with a border running through it, which brings up customs.
The long run: Belle Isle
From the south end of the lake, past Grosse Pointe Shores, the Detroit River starts and runs 31 miles to Lake Erie. Belle Isle sits at the head of it, roughly 7 nautical miles from Grosse Pointe Shores to the downtown riverfront. Current picks up, freighter traffic is steady, and the Canadian side is right there. Do it on a calm morning.
Before you leave the slip
It is shallow. Average depth is about 11 feet, and the bottom slopes so gently that both the Michigan and Ontario shores stay thin well offshore. Wind pushes the water around; day-to-day level changes of more than a foot are common. A west or northwest wind builds a short, steep chop faster than the forecast suggests, and the run home from the Flats is straight into it.
The shipping channel. The dredged channel runs about 16 miles from the head of the Detroit River northeast to the St. Clair Cutoff. It is buoyed, 27 feet deep, and the freighters in it cannot stop or turn for you. Cross at a right angle, well clear, and never cut close alongside a hull.
The border. The boundary runs through the middle of the lake and leaves it down the South Channel. Cruising into Canadian water is not the problem; landing is. If you tie up, anchor at a Canadian dock, or set foot ashore in Ontario, you must report to CBP on return. The CBP ROAM app is the easy way; the Detroit office also takes reports at (313) 393-3949. The penalty for skipping it starts at $5,000 and can include the boat.
No-wake, everywhere it matters. Michigan law is slow-no wake within 100 feet of the shoreline, docks, rafts, swimmers, and anchored boats, buoys or not, on top of the posted canals, creeks, and the Clinton River.
Fuel and pump-out. On the Harrison Township shore the two big fuel docks are MacRay Harbor at the mouth of the Clinton River, with gas, diesel, and three pump-out stations, and Safe Harbor Belle Maer on Conger Bay Drive. Call for fuel dock hours. The marina directory and the best marinas list cover the rest of the lake. Top off before the Flats; the run there and back is the longest stretch of the day without a pump.