Bigger boats invade Minnesota lake culture

Minnesota boat dealer Frankie Dusenka remembers when a 16-foot aluminum fishing boat was considered "big.''

Not on this Memorial Day weekend.

The days when 14- and 15-foot motor boats dominated the lake scene are long gone, surpassed by a bigger-better mentality that includes a fascination with luxury pontoon boats, a brisk business in $80,000 wake-surfing inboard motor boats and a boom in 18- to 20-foot, deep-hulled fishing boats.

According to data obtained from the Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota remains a leading national boating state, with 15 watercraft registered for every 100 people. That's slightly fewer registrations per capita than were sustained in the Land of 10,000 Lakes before the 2007-2009 recession. In terms of total boats registered, the most recent snapshot from 2015 counted 808,627 registered boats.

As the state's overall fleet of private boats continues to recover in number, many more changes in state boating trends are evident in registration data since 1980. Sail boating has collapsed, kayaking has surged, canoes have passed their peak and paddle boarding has emerged so quickly that the DNR only began tracking it separately in 2013. In that short time, the number of registrations has tripled.

Motor boats make up 68 percent of all registered boats and they appear to be a big factor in the dropoff in registrations when the recession hit. In 2007, there were 115 motor boats registered for every 1,000 people in the state. Two years later that dropped to 106 and has continued to slide since then.

"All the boats and all the motors are getting bigger and they've skyrocketed in price,'' said Jeff Hannay, owner of Hannays Marine in Minneapolis. "But the good news is that everyone who can afford a boat is still buying.''

As recently as 1990, small motor boats of this type (less than 16 feet) made up the majority of all registered motor boats in the state, according to the DNR. But the tide shifted in 2000 and the margin of bigger boats to smaller boats has steadily grown.

And Hannay said sales of 18-foot and larger fishing boats this year -- both fiberglass models and aluminum -- are far surpassing expectations that were held as recently as last fall.

Dusenka said boat owners who had to sell newly purchased boats during the recession are back in the market. And both Hannay and Dusenka said luxury pontoon boats, many 20 feet or longer, probably have had the largest impact on the growth of large motor boats in the state.

"You know the annual boat show?'' Dusenka asked. "Well, it's not the boat show anymore. It's the pontoon show.''

No place in Minnesota has a higher concentration of boats than Cook County, home to the North Shore, Gunflint Trail, many rivers and parts of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. According to the most recent data, there's almost a 1-to-1 ratio of residents and watercraft in the county.

She said outfitters and area resorts help skew the data by registering hundreds if not thousands of canoes and other boats for the rental market. For instance, Tuscarora Lodge and Outfitters owns seven motor boats and more than 70 canoes, she said. Overall in Cook County, there's one canoe for every two people.

The map shows the number of boat registrations per 100 people in each county, based on the home county of the registered owner (not necessarily the primary location where the boat is used). Click on a county to see the number of registered boats by type.

Similar boat densities exist in neighboring Lake and St. Louis counties, where canoe outfitting also in popular.

Ginny Nelson, co-owner of Spirit of the Wilderness in Ely, said she's surprised the boat-to-people ratio isn't greater than 1-to-1 because residents all tend to own a few types of watercraft notwithstanding all the canoes and boats registered by area resorts and backcountry outfitters.

Some other fun facts:

Crow Wing County, in the heart of the Brainerd lakes area, has 3,785 pontoon boats registered, or six pontoons for every hundred. Cass and Becker counties are close behind in pontoon boat registrations, each with five of the boats per 100 people.

The biggest recent increase in a type of boat -- with the exception of paddle boards -- has been in kayaks. The number of kayaks registered in 2015 is about 85 percent higher than just 10 years ago.

The explosion is partly related to the increasing popularity of kayak fishing. Grant Carston, an officer with the Minnesota Kayak Fishing Association, said the group has grown to more than 700 members since 2013. He said the appeal of the activity includes easy hauling, low price, aerobic benefits, simplicity and solitude.

Personal watercraft, widely referred to in Minnesota as jet skis, also have boomed in the state. The numbers skyrocketed from just more than 1 registration per 1,000 people to nearly 7 registrations from 1990 to 2000. But since peaking at more than 9 registrations per 1,000 people in 2008, the trend in personal watercraft registrations has dropped and leveled off.

Canoes peaked in popularity in 2001 and have dropped each year since then.

Dean Sanberg of Windrider International in south Minneapolis said the decline of sailing was under way before the recession. People have gone away from it because daily excursions can consume three to four hours at a time and other activities are pulling people away. Recruiting young people also has been a challenge, Sanberg said.

As one indication of the decline, mooring balls on Lake Calhoun that were once nearly impossible to obtain are "open to just about anyone'' because of the low demand, Sanberg said.

The table below shows total registrations by boat type for key years. Note that these include out-of-state registrations of boats that will be used in Minnesota. The DNR included pontoons in the motorboat category here (however, you can see it broken out as a separate category in the county map above for registrations by county of the owner).