Personal Story from the Lakes Convention
- walworthlakes
- Apr 6
- 3 min read
Editor's note: This is a letter we received from Tony Novak with an important perspective about Wakesurfing Boats. Thank you Tony for sharing!
Hello,
I attended the Wisconsin Lakes Convention at Steven's Point for 3 days. (March 26-28, 2025) They had over 500 people attend. This is the place where you get a great education how to take care of your lakes, rivers and streams. You meet and network with many people whose mission is to protect our beautiful lakes, rivers and streams.
The HOT TOPIC is WAKESURFING. I spent 2 1/2 hours in class watching video's, listening to speakers and looking at the science on how Wakesurfing is so destructive. I never really knew much about this sport. Now I do, and it is very destructive to our Wisconsin Lakes. The lake I live on is Lake Lorraine, 155 acres, and basically a shallow lake. Average depth about 8 feet and the deepest spot in a small area is 18 feet.
Wakesurfing is for large deep lakes. Small lakes like ours cannot survive the power of these boats. It would destroy our lake in a very short time. Many of the lakes in WI are the same way.
Please look at the diagram below and you will quickly see how fast Wakesurfing can destroy our lakes. When you add 600 gallons of water to the ballast on these boats you are adding up to 5,000 more pounds of weight to the back of the boat. The downward force of water goes down 20 to 30 feet and tears out plant life by their roots out of the lake bottom. Without aquatic plants the fish do not have a place to hide and spawn. They are destroying our great fishing, water from their ballast can bring in invasive plants and unwanted living organisms such as zebra mussels. It is a safety issue because their bow rides high and you cannot see other boats, canoes, kayaks, swimmers etc. in front of the boat. People in canoes, kayaks are being swamped with water and and thrown out in the water. Sediment from the bottom is stirred up and can cause algae blooms. They create 3 and 4 foot waves that can damage shorelines, boats, piers, and injure people. I have attached a pdf file with many pages of information on wakesurfing. Please read to educate yourself.
In addition, I attended a meeting about Lake Beulah in East Troy. (March 29, 2025) Please go to U-Tube and type in John Stoss East Troy. You will see 7 video's that John recorded at this meeting. Lake Beulah is a big lake and wakesurfing has destroy their reefs, lake bottom, shoreline erosion, fishing etc. This is all documented with underwater cameras and thrones. Seeing is believing and it is not a pretty site. See and hear for yourself and you will quickly understand why we need to ban wakesurfing from most of the lakes in WI.
Don't kid yourself and say these boats will not come to our smaller lakes. About 8 years ago a wake boat came on Lake Lorraine. The waves were huge and smashing into our shorelines. Quickly some of us went out to talk to the owner and asked him not to do wakesurfing on our lake. Luckily, they agreed and left. We never saw them again.
Booth Lake, by Lake Beulah, is 118 acres. A person spoke at this meeting telling us how wakesurfing has destroyed their lake. Ripping the plants out of the lake bottom by their roots and spreading invasive plants around the lake. Now they have a big problem trying to control all these invasive plants throughout their lake.
This sport is getting bigger and bigger each year. So our their boats. I was told that Lake Delavan has over 109 wake boats on the lake. Plus a lot of more building and boat slips being added. I talked to a person who uses the mechanical harvester and was almost overturned by the large waves hitting him. They had to add more floatation devices around the harvester to keep it from flipping over.
In Wisconsin, towns, townships, villages and cities have the power to make an ordinance to prevent wakesurfing on our lakes. Wake boats are allowed as long as their ballast is empty of water and the tanks have been cleaned. We need to protect our lakes for people today and everyone in the future so they can enjoy our lakes.
If you take the time to look at the video's and read the material, you will come up with the same conclusion I did very quickly. Wakesurfing is a danger to other people on the water, destroys property and is detrimental to our lakes. Took me 1 second to process and say NO.
Please see the attached file with a lot more information.
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