Unfortnately every time a politican gets a, feel good and lets get some more votes idea, we suffer.
Does anybody really think we can stop it?
I doubt it.
Continue to spread the idea of trying to slow it down, and spend the money on cures, not feel good crap that they’re doing now.
Al
All –
A few things to remember about this –
1.) Nobody likes invasives (except me – I like Milfoil) The lakeshore owners, the boaters, etc. The more they complain – the more it gets attention. ( Read between the lines – MONEY TALKS)
2.) The other undercurrent is restrictive access to “semi-private” lakes on the basis that I don’t want my lake contaminated – AGAIN MONEY TALKING…
3.) As far as access to your watercraft – all you have to say in “no” – It is private property – they have no right to board or climb in at a check point – TRUST ME ON THIS – I HAVE TAKEN THIS ISSUE TO THE TOP IN MN.
4.) Lastly, learn to play the game with the rules that are available – education is the key. Get involved and be a voice for facts, logical explaination and reason. Getting all worked up and ranting is only losing control and shows weakness.
5.) Write the DNR, write Mark Dayton, write your State Reps. – do it with a high level of integrity and be factual – rants only get your argument thrown in the trash with all the other “special interest”.
This is too important – on so many levels – to lose this battle
I would rather have to conceed to a checkpoint review vs loosing my access to a lake that I want to fish or hunt…..
Dog 
I always take the time to clean my trailer after loading the boat weather heading home or to a new spot! I would hope the next guy will do the same!
But road side checks! NO this is going to far! I will support any efforts to stop it! weather by voice or donations or whatever!
Now if they want to set up checks at Public landings or private landing with the permission of owners! Then i support it! If you dont stop it at the point of entry or exit then your wasting time and money and violating our rights! There are still some laws to protect us right?? Or have I had my eyes closed too long!!
Good idea and I can’t wait until they start dishing out tickets.
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But they do have the right to ask if they can and you have the right to say no
In WI, an authorized representative of the DNR (Warden…) can board your boat and look all they want. They are above the law when it comes to your property. On the other side, a Sheriff, State Trooper, or Police officer must obtain a search warrant to view anything that isn’t in plain sight without your permission.
With the recent changes in WI laws over the last few years, I am not aware of any local law enforcement agencies enforcing the laws. I have witnessed wardens having boaters pulled over roadside and looking beneath their trailers.
In general, most people do a great job of clearing the majority of crap from their boat/trailer at the launch before transporting. Naturally, there will always be the few that don’t care. We can’t control waterfowl, floods,…but we can aid in controlling most of the human error. We can’t fix stupidity, but laws will help reduce it.
My issue with the transportation laws is applying a black/white rule to a gray situation. I personally liked seeing wardens and other DNR representatives at boat launches educating and enforcing the rules. I shake my head in disbelief when I see mass amounts of wet weeds/crap hanging from a trailer going down the road. But I cringe at the idea of a law abiding citizen making better than a reasonable effort to clean their trailer, only to get a fine for virtually nothing. If a trained person searches long enough, they will find something
Well said Grouse Dog 
Just a few other thoughts here to chew on, and these are not directed at you GD.
I would just like to add, that all the finger pointing at who came up with this legislation can not be directed at a single source.
There are alot of entities thet have direct finacial resposibilities that are driving this.
How else could a Lake association, be allowed to control access to a certain lake.
To me; the last statement chills me more than getting stopped by the DNR for a boat inspection.
I may be missing something here and this may even be off the stated track,
Please anyone; show me where, there is logical and factual evidence, that invasives have placed an adverse effect on the biology of any bodie of water.
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As citizens we have the rights to enjoy public waters. Walk in them, swim in them, drink them. But we do not have the right to do them harm. If your elected officials believe the invasives do harm to the public waters it’s their duty to protect them. If it requires inspections so be it. If the results are tickets, so be it. If you don’t like it, then again, so be it.
My problem with this whole situation is that the state/federal governments have simply sat on their thumbs for decades bowing to transport companies that run the cargo ships from whose ballast water these critters come from. Or most of em. Laws should be in place to stop this from happening to begin with! 
Now, the cat is out of the bag, there are still no laws to stop new critters from getting into out water and fields and now we get to pay the price for “slowing” the spread. I have been watching the slow steady march of the asian carp as they move upriver for years. Groups have been sounding the alarm for years. DNR’s from several states have been sounding the alarm for years and yet all we have is some “electric fences” that appear to have either failed or not worked as intended. I don’t know about this gee-wizz DNA test that can isolate asian carp DNA from river water and everything else that is in it, but, if it is true then the buggers are already to the northern suburbs.
The east coast states pretty much sued every state to the west over pollution from power plants. Why can the upriver states not sue the bejeezus out of what ever state allowed these fish to be imported and then accidently released?
I carefully pick any weeds off my boat before I leave the ramp/parking lot, I have removed my drain plug since I bought the boat. Lol, I thought it was a law before it was a law so no big deal to me there. I wash my boat when I get home and only once in 5 years have I been lucky enough to go out again the following weekend. Except for that one time the boat sits for at least two weeks between outings. From how I understand the law any boat could be tagged for not being clean just pulling out of the ramp. No way to get it completely dry, it just came out of the water! What if it is raining? I am sorry, I am NOT going to crawl under my boat in a gravel parking lot, with mosquitos and other summer time bugs gnawing on me to look for some tiny speck of weed that hung up out of view from me. If that warrants a ticket, so be it. They start doing that and people will just stop buying/using boats your just about certain to get a ticket if/when you get caught up in one of these roadside checks. Sure, the guys pulling out with weeds visibly hanging from the trailer deserve a ticket. I don’t feel I do if some DNR employee specially trained to ID and locate the almost microscopic speck of a spiny water flea or zebra mussel larvae discovers something after contorting himself to get eyes on some dark inaccesible recess of my boat.
Yes, I will say yessir, yessir, three bags full WHEN I get checked, I will TRY to comply. Do I think I will still end up with a ticket, yup. Dunno how any boat can pass with the wording of the law.
Big money grab is all this is.
Hi Jeff not to be a smarta$$ I wanted to supply this information for you and others who have varying questions on invasives. A excellent source of factual information is The University of Wisconsin Trout lake Research facicilty. You can google it and will come up easily. This is the oldest research facility in the world and top researchers from the around the world come here for some of their research work. Additionally Some of the lakes they study are the most studied lakes in the world. Lake Mendota has the longest record of scientific study of any Lake in the world. For some invasive species I know Lake Mendota has just recently (2yeas ago) become infected with spiny water flea and it is seening a big change in clarity because the flea is a voracious feeder on zooplankton which feed on algae, so there is a good record of the lake before the flea and after the flea. The Flea is currently being studied by a Graduate Student there and his Professor. I could supply a name if anyone is interested with talking with him. There is even a group of scientist who I believed just meet in Minnesota for a convention on the flea. Another invasive species making a big impact is the rusty cray fish native to the Ohio area, there is information on it at the researchs digital library. Also the rainbow smelt is having a big influence in northern lakes so much so that researchers are trying to mix the water in a whole lake so the temp is unfavorable and the smelt die off. This is just some of what I know. Please do not take this offensive anyone, it is not directed towards anyone and I just wanted to supply a way to find out facts. I also think it would great to see U of M join in the fight, the more minds we have working on these problems and figuring out which ones need to be addressed and which are really of no harm the better.
Could we just kill all the weeds by the landings ? I can see weeds on your lower unit, from traveling the waters, but on your bunks ? It has to be getting there from the landing area.. maybe at all the infested lakes, the DNR officers could be given rakes and keep the landings free of weeds ? This would surely slow or even stop it from being transported. Now as far as mussels… that’s another issue
Hi Big G, I don’t know about killing all of the weeds at the landing. First some of those areas are valuable fish habitat especially for young fish. Then I wonder how we contain what is used to kill them from moving through the water to other areas we did not intend to kill off. I think Maintenance would help. The landing I used this fall on Lake Mendota was so full of ree floating weeds that I spent a hlaf hour cleaning weeds from my trailer. If all those free floating weeds were cleaned up I probably would not have had much of anything to clean off. For the most part weeds rooted in the bottom stay there. Then again how do we fund the clean up becomes an issue. Maybe the DNR could supply tools and local fishing clubs could volunteer to help clean them up. I know Trout Unlimited goes out to help with stream maintenance and clean up so why not other clubs doing the same with lakes. Just an idea.
Raking millfoil will just spread it. All it takes is a tiny stem to float off somewhere else to establish it somewhere else in the lake.
As for invasives adversely affecting a body of water negatively, you don’t know from body of water to body of water. Even if a weed had a bunch of positive affects, I don’t want them in a new body of water.
For instance millfoil they say is great bass habitat and habitat for other fish. Even so, I don’t want it dramatically changing the ecology of a lake. I want to fish lakes with the same biobase that they had 100 years ago and to keep the lake looking like a Minnesota lake. Also, with any introduction it is not going to be 100% neutral or positive.
These inspections could actually be positive in stopping and enlightening people more about the problem. I just hope they don’t become a pain in the rear with long waits and traffic issues, because then they are going to become a negative.
Simply put I think mandatory roadside checks for boats are BS and rather un-American. To find a missing kid, yes. Sobriety checkpoint, maybe. Look at someones boat? No f$^@% way.
let me just say, if you have a different view on things in this world than I do, I would never call you a smart alec for expessing those views.
Maybe I used the wrong word…. I meant “remove” as with rakes… basically like weeding your garden. When we were kids growing up on the lake… we NEVER had a weed in our swimming area. We used rakes and our hands to keep about a 100 foot by 100 fooot area weed free. 
Kids came from all over the neighborhood to swim in our area 
Kill was probably not the right word. 
Thanks fo clarifying Big G, I see what your getting at now.
Pug your a right a very small peice of Miilfoil will take up residence in a new area of a lake if it drifts or blown there etc, but removing the vegation that is all ready floating could only be a positive at the boat landings. I don’t know if you have the aquatic weed harvester that go out and cut the problem vegatation down and hauls it away to waiting trucks, but they leave alot of floating debri behind. Also millfoil can grow without rooting itself leaving it available to blown around a lake. This really is a tough issue to solve and I think it is going to take many different pracitces to help until a real solution is found and all of us working together, bringing ideas to the table, who knows where the solutions will come from.
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In WI, an authorized representative of the DNR (Warden…) can board your boat and look all they want. They are above the law when it comes to your property. On the other side, a Sheriff, State Trooper, or Police officer must obtain a search warrant to view anything that isn’t in plain sight without your permission.
wow….the fail in this is epic….
so, how exactly is the CO over the US Constitution?
the problem here, is people have let them do it, and “think” its ok. so, we go along thinking what they are doing, they have the right to do.
just because people allow them to overstep their boundaries, doesn’t mean its right.
So this applies to ALL boaters, not just MN residents correct?
As a WI resident – I don’t want your free compliance reminder sticker on my boat….I understand that the education time is over, but this seems more like harassment than enforcement…and if that’s what other out of staters end up thinking, you might just not have as many out of staters bringing their $ to your area’s…
Also – will they be doing these checks at night as well?
Just some initial thoughts….still kinda on the fence on my full opinion…
Actually, with the weed roemoval idea, the concern shouldn’t be with the infested lake, until we can find a proven way to erradicate on an already infested lake… My idea to stop the hitchhiking on bunks/rollers…. by keeping the back in ramps free and clear, should stop the trailer riders. But again, we must clean the lower unit off on shore.
Spot checks of trailers and watercraft is something most of us who are trying to do something about AIS support. The alternative to increased enforcement is likely access loss. We are seeing plans for gating accesses, moratoriums on new accesses and plans that call for closing public access. These folks are putting enormous pressure on the DNR, Legislature and the public to take draconian measures. They are calling for no trailering without total decontamination, all paid for by boaters. They want “rental” boats on lakes to replace trailering. They want decontamination stations on all major highways entering Minnesota and making it illegal to enter except for these highways. They want Red Boat/Blue Boat labels on boats used on any infested waters. And to pay for all this, raiding of the Legacy, Lottery (LCCMR) funds and a dramatic increase in boat registration fees.
How realistic it that we might see these things actually happen? Probably not likely but not off the table. Just look to California where anglers are buying Craigslist bass boats to keep on area lakes. Or Wyoming and Colorado where accessed are only open the hours that manned inspectors are there. While Minnesota has far more lakes, these types of approaches are being strongly promoted for the existing 78 watersheds/lakes/rivers that have ZM.
Others may question will the current DNR efforts will work, and are they worth the expenditures? Will they actually slow the spread? Good question, but what is the alternative? If we error on trying to contain the spread, lets hope that we error on the side of doing more then is needed and not the reverse.
As I see it, our job as anglers and boaters is to be part of the solution. We are the ones who see what really goes on at accesses. We see the folks not pulling their plugs or handpicking weeds. We are the one’s who need to loosen up our comfort zone and start mentioning the rules, offering a lending hand and in some cases making a phone call if we see a fragrant violation. The last two ZM/dock issues were reported by citizens who had education about the problem.
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Actually, with the weed roemoval idea, the concern shouldn’t be with the infested lake, until we can find a proven way to erradicate on an already infested lake… My idea to stop the hitchhiking on bunks/rollers…. by keeping the back in ramps free and clear, should stop the trailer riders. But again, we must clean the lower unit off on shore.
I wasn’t thinking along those lines, but it then it brings up the point that people might pick up small undetectable pieces of weeds. They could get caught in areas where you can’t see them and then get flushed out on a new lake.
I do like how this is making for a good discussion.
point taken… but on a lighter note, can’t see it = no ticket..
Hi Pug, a thought on those small peices, don’t we have them already from the floating vegatation being there and props churning and shoping them up during loading and unloading. Maybe the reduction of the floating vegatation would also lead to a reduction in small peices. Again just a thougt.
Another good point. A great quote floating around at the round table was, “If you want to go somewhere fast go alone. If you want to go somewhere far, go together.”
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Spot checks of trailers and watercraft is something most of us who are trying to do something about AIS support. The alternative to increased enforcement is likely access loss. We are seeing plans for gating accesses, moratoriums on new accesses and plans that call for closing public access. These folks are putting enormous pressure on the DNR, Legislature and the public to take draconian measures. They are calling for no trailering without total decontamination, all paid for by boaters. They want “rental” boats on lakes to replace trailering. They want decontamination stations on all major highways entering Minnesota and making it illegal to enter except for these highways. They want Red Boat/Blue Boat labels on boats used on any infested waters. And to pay for all this, raiding of the Legacy, Lottery (LCCMR) funds and a dramatic increase in boat registration fees.
How realistic it that we might see these things actually happen? Probably not likely but not off the table. Just look to California where anglers are buying Craigslist bass boats to keep on area lakes. Or Wyoming and Colorado where accessed are only open the hours that manned inspectors are there. While Minnesota has far more lakes, these types of approaches are being strongly promoted for the existing 78 watersheds/lakes/rivers that have ZM.Others may question will the current DNR efforts will work, and are they worth the expenditures? Will they actually slow the spread? Good question, but what is the alternative? If we error on trying to contain the spread, lets hope that we error on the side of doing more then is needed and not the reverse.
As I see it, our job as anglers and boaters is to be part of the solution. We are the ones who see what really goes on at accesses. We see the folks not pulling their plugs or handpicking weeds. We are the one’s who need to loosen up our comfort zone and start mentioning the rules, offering a lending hand and in some cases making a phone call if we see a fragrant violation. The last two ZM/dock issues were reported by citizens who had education about the problem.
I think people misunderstand the reason that western states are wound up about AIS and it isn’t in the name of protecting the resource. It’s all about water. Water for drinking, water for irrigation and water for livestock.
Personally I think its a joke. A lot of the public landings are so full of weeds its impossible to get the all off especially with bunks. I do my best to get all the major stuff off at the landing, when I get home I will park on the pavement and use a creeper. My boat also gets washed before heading to and from another lake.
I am not going to crawl around in the mud and dirt at a boat landing that’s for sure.
They want to stop the transport of invasive species they should start by cleaning up the landings! I also think they are using this tactic to be looking for more then weeds on trailers.
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I also think they are using this tactic to be looking for more then weeds on trailers.
nooooo…..they would never do that… 
Like most of you I can’t say I’m keen on it. I do my best every time my boat comes out of the water.
The idea of wasting time stopping bothers me. But what bothers me more is the idea of some wet behind the ears college kid using a high pressure sprayer on my boat.
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Like most of you I can’t say I’m keen on it. I do my best every time my boat comes out of the water.
The idea of wasting time stopping bothers me. But what bothers me more is the idea of some wet behind the ears college kid using a high pressure sprayer on my boat.
its for the best of the sheeple though…
I’m All worked up over this …. 
I can see where this will be a concern for the guys that drink and drive, hunt, fish and those that do drugs “weed” that crowd will have to take precautions in order not to draw attention to there illegal activity’s.
Me, I’ll pull in have them do there thing and be mildly inconvenienced for a bit. I may even [censored] a bit about it. 
Then again I’m just a sheeple… 
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I’m All worked up over this ….
I can see where this will be a concern for the guys that drink and drive, hunt, fish and those that do drugs “weed” that crowd will have to take precautions in order not to draw attention to there illegal activity’s.
Me, I’ll pull in have them do there thing and be mildly inconvenienced for a bit. I may even [censored] a bit about it.
Then again I’m just a sheeple…
Personally I instinctually resist giving up my freedoms.
I didnt know until just now us fisherman are a bunch of drunken pot heads. Peace out my bruthas!!!
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