These boats kick up giant waves, stirring up love in their users and loathing in many others. But let’s start with a moment of agreement: “To be honest with you, it looks like a hell of a lot of fun,” says Dan Butkus, who lives near Madison and has a place on Squash Lake in Oneida County.
Who can dispute his statement? Wakeboats are the oversized boats you see with a skier behind who may look more like a surfer, who’s sometimes attached to the boat with a towrope and sometimes is not, instead riding the churning wavestream or even launching into aerial tricks – think 360-degree spins or backflips. Fun, indeed.
Butkus’ praise for the boats, which have been on Wisconsin lakes for decades but have grown in numbers since the pandemic, is followed by an enormous “but.”
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“The trouble becomes, you know, when you’re operating these things in too shallow [water] and too close to shore for the wake to dissipate properly,” says Butkus, who in April retired as president of Wisconsin Lakes, a statewide organization that represents lake districts and associations. “It does cause disruption along the shoreline.”
Butkus’ organization has joined many other lakes and conservation groups in calling for more strict regulations, and state laws, governing the boats’ use. His comment gets at the central questions: How close to the shore is too close, and how shallow is too shallow?
THE IDEA THAT THESE RELATIVE newcomers to Wisconsin’s lakescape are a uniquely toxic threat has gained significant backing. A flood of press reports has painted them as such. State lawmakers are looking at the issue, although they can’t come to much of an agreement. Local towns and lake districts aren’t waiting, with some imposing their own restrictions.
Against what may seem like unanimity, many pro-wakeboat folks are pushing back.
“If you’re going to take somebody’s rights away, you better have incontrovertible proof that there’s a greater harm,” says Bill Banholzer, a professor of chemical engineering at UW-Madison. “And as I looked into this, [the proof] is not there.”
Banholzer has a place on Hunter Lake in Vilas County. He owns a boat that can be used in wake mode, but it’s only a few times a year that he pulls a wakeboarder. His interest in protecting the boats comes from seeing people with disabilities, and older people, having an easier time with wakesurfing – simply riding the waves a boat kicks up behind it, with no attachment to the craft – due to not having to hold onto a towrope, not having feet strapped to a ski and other factors.
“It extends people’s ability” to enjoy watersports, he says. And, given his scientific bent, he’s seen the purported evidence about their destructive qualities – and isn’t convinced. If wakeboats were the villains they’re portrayed as, he says, he’d be right there with their opponents: “I care way more about my lake than I do about my boat.”
Wakeboats differ in significant ways from the boats you’re used to seeing. Primarily, they have large ballast tanks that hold as much as 5,000 pounds of water. That extra weight requires extra oomph to make the boat go fast, which is provided by high-power motors. The combination of weight and horsepower disrupts water in a more powerful way, and many have fins and other features designed to produce larger, more turbulent wave patterns directly behind the boat – hence the name.
The very point of wakeboats is to maximize turbulence for tubing, wakesurfing or waterskiing.
HOW DISRUPTIVE ARE THESE so-called floating monster trucks to the ecosystem below and the shoreline beyond?
Different sources say different things, or, at minimum, inspire different takeaways.
Conservation groups have amassed plenty of damning evidence. This includes underwater photos of lake bottoms whose plant and aquatic life is scarred irreparably after a wakeboat zips through. Sediment that’s stirred up affects water clarity and is believed to lead to algae blooms. Add to that reports of battered sea walls and displaced riprap on shorelines.
At least three studies have concluded that wakeboats’ waves take longer to dissipate than those of regular boats and arrive at shore with more energy and height, which can lead to erosion. A 2024 study in Connecticut found waves from wakeboats were twice as high as those from ski boats, had four times the energy and required at least five times the distance to dissipate.
Concerns also focus on the spread of invasive species, such as zebra mussels, when the boats go from lake to lake and their ballasts don’t fully drain.
And then, there are the stories of kayakers, stand-up paddleboarders and other silent sports enthusiasts knocked out of their vessels by the large wakes.
“There are a number of issues that come up with these boats,” Butkus says. “It’s not just one thing.”
Adding it all up, a coalition of lakes-focused groups, Lakes at Stake Wisconsin, has come up with recommended statewide standards that wakeboats operate no closer than 700 feet from shore and only in water 30 feet or deeper. By some estimates, that would restrict the boats to about 65 total lakes in a state with about 15,000 of them.
Contrast that with the guidelines suggested by wakeboat advocates: operating no closer than 200 feet from shore and only in water 10 feet or deeper.
Banholzer and other wakeboat proponents reached those numbers by what he calls an objective look at data in scientifically rigorous studies. Banholzer analyzed studies on wave dynamics in general, and wakeboats in particular, from the past 40 years and summarizes the movement against wakeboats as being driven by “anecdotes, exaggerations and speculation.” The Connecticut study often cited by wakeboat opponents, he writes, “is self-published with no editorial review, lacks elements of scientific rigor, and fails to provide credible evidence to support its conclusions.”
The Water Sports Industry Association, a national trade group headquartered in Orlando, has taken up the cause with state and local governments, lobbying against what it describes as overly restrictive requirements.
In 2023, a bill was drafted in the Wisconsin Legislature that would have largely followed the pro-wakeboat guidelines: 200 feet clearance from shore, and a ban on lakes smaller than 50 acres. In the face of heavy criticism for being too lenient, it died without getting a hearing.
At least 40 municipalities in Wisconsin – of roughly 1,200 in total – have passed ordinances that restrict or ban wakeboats in their waters. The majority are in small northern locales and have been passed in recent years. Mequon and Thiensville enacted bans in 2009.
The Lac du Flambeau Band of Lake Superior Chippewa passed perhaps the most comprehensive limitation, banning wakeboats in any tribal waters, which includes 260 lakes in far north central Wisconsin, in an emergency order in April 2024. The tribe cited many of the same concerns as Lakes at Stake, additionally citing wakeboats’ role in uprooting wild rice that grows in tribal lakes.
The ordinances point out how complex the issue will be to settle legally. For starters, who’s going to enforce any laws? Most sheriff’s departments won’t do so, and the Department of Natural Resources so far hasn’t committed to having wardens out patrolling. This gap would leave enforcement to meager outfits who patrol the waters for lake districts.
And how will it be enforced? Lakes with bans are straightforward – if you’re operating there, you’re in violation. But those that limit distance from shoreline and depth get trickier. Lakes vary greatly in depth from spot to spot; distance from shoreline can be hard to judge. Pinning a violation on any boat would seem complicated at best.
STATE SEN. MARY FELZKOWSKI, a Republican from Tomahawk in northern Wisconsin, represents the second-largest Senate district in the state, encompassing parts of 10 counties and all those lakes. She hears about wakeboats – a lot. She cites a camp in her district that is restricting kids’ access to the lake for fear of getting swamped. There’s an old folks lake cruise where the pontoon was nearly capsized by wakeboat waves.
“I do understand there’s a lot of concern around wakeboats,” she says. “And I do think some of it is very justified.”
She’s also seen responsible use of the boats, where they keep a healthy distance both from other vessels and from shore, and have a blast. She says most complaints fall on visitors who bring their boats.
“If I’m coming up north and I’m renting an Airbnb for a week, I probably don’t understand the lay of the land – where the shallow parts are, where the weed beds are, where the good fishing spots are, where it narrows,” she says. “So I may be somewhat indifferent … as to what damage or inconvenience that I would give to other people, because, hey, I’m only here for a week.”
Felzkowski co-authored the 2023 bill with the 200-foot clearance and 50-acre lake minimums. It didn’t have a depth provision in part because of the impracticality of enforcement when lakes vary so dramatically from one spot to the next. It didn’t go as far as conservationists wanted – 700 feet from shore – in part because doing so would segregate wakeboats in so few lakes statewide, an unfair burden for those relatively few big lakes.
Felzkowski said she plans to convene further face-to-face meetings involving the various groups on different sides of the issue.
Of the 2023 bill, she says it faced long odds from the start and unsurprisingly didn’t make it far. But it wasn’t the end. “We proposed it as a starting point,” she says. “Let’s get this conversation going right now.”
