(Spirit Lake)—With 70 degree temperatures in the forecast for the upcoming weekend and with Walleye Weekend just around the corner, many will be looking at putting their boat in the water for the first time of the season. Jeff Morrison, an enforcement officer with the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, says there are several things you need to think about before you do that. Number one, he says you need to make sure your registration is current, as this is a registration year. All boat registrations automatically expire this coming Tuesday, April 30th. Second, he says, is to make sure your boat and its equipment is up to snuff…(click here for comment.)
“Make sure your batteries are all charged up and ready to go. Somethimes they’ll over the winter develop a bad cell or whatever and they won’t work. And even if they put a charge on them by the time they get to the water the battery’s dead again. So it’s a good idea to test the batteries. Nothing more frustrating and embarrassing than getting to the ramp, get the boat started, so you have to pull it back out and go get a new battery or whatever else. Check lower units to make sure they change lower unit oil, have done that maintenance either in the spring or the fall. If they didn’t do it in the fall then they should probably check it in the spring. Make sure they haven’t got any fishing line around the prop. That’s another thing that will take seals out. Go through your safety equipment, make sure that’s all in working order. A good time to check the lights. A lot of us don’t think about the lights until it’s the first time we’re going to be out there after dark. If the bulbs are bad or we’ve got a switch that’s gone bad on us that’s a bad time to find that out. So just go through the boat and do some general maintenance on it in the spring before you go out.”
Morrison also reminds boat owners they will need to disinfect their boat before moving from lake-to-lake in the Iowa Great Lakes. That’s due to the fact that invasive species are thought to be present in some of the Iowa Great Lakes, and not in others.
