Mussels - latest request by our local lakes

[dogbert]

What's to keep birds or animals from potentially transferring them from lake to lake? Don't they have small larvae?

They won't go boating.

[Timmy!]

Ok, here's the sheet that they gave me:

[DieselPWR]

Took the boat out the other night to the local lake and went through the usual mussel inspection. I went and got it re-inspected after taking it out so I can avoid the line next time I go in. The lady handed me a sheet of paper (I will scan it in/post it up tomorrow) for boats with ballast systems and told me that I needed to go have my ballast system "sanitized". I looked at her puzzled as I had all of the bags that I used on the swim platform for her to inspect and they were all empty.

On the sheet of paper, they are requesting that people take their boats to various shops in the area to have a hot water rinse run through the ballast system after every time out on the lake citing that the system needs to be gone through with 140+ degree water in order to make sure that the mussels aren't in there. This lake does not have mussels (that they know of) and I showed them that the bags were empty but she still insisted that I needed to go to one of the local shops. I started to argue and decided to just let it be.

Question - how hot of water can the fly high sacs take? Just wondering if I should plumb my ballast install into the hot water like my heater is and that would guarantee that those little buggers are dead. Just a thought...

What lake was it? Its amazing to see how different the lakes are in the zebra mussel approach. At Sterling they were talking about seizing my boat. At Chatfield my buddy just brought his boat up from Mississippi which the inspector said was on his hot list. All my buddy said was "my sacks are empty", and the inspector replied have fun. No search at all.

[Timmy!]

This was at Boyd lake. Funny how they are all different! Seize your boat?!?!? WTH?

[Waterski-Rebel]

Timmy - My answer to you would be, don't go back to Boyd. The water is too choppy. :-) Just use it at Stanley, and Glendo.

When I went to Chatfield a couple weeks ago, the ranger asked me to pull my plug, and that was about it. I thought the inspection was a joke. When I got my permit at Sloans it was much more detailed, but I only had to have it inspected once, then I'm good for the rest of the year. They did tell me if I take the boat out of state, I need to take it by the Colorado Parks office up north, and have them sanitize my whole boat. We aren't going out of state, and probably will only use it on sloans the rest of the year, so I'm good there.