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Anyone have cop trouble while surfing?


triscadek

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Yes...takes a lot to hold smart comments back like "can yall not keep notes that my registration is good til may of 2016" or "both my fire extinguishers were good yesterday, I'm sure one is still good today"

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My last experience: Holiday weekend. Leave the boards on the dock because of the rough water and head to the sandbar to chill. Hang out there with friends most of the day. Good times. Prepare to leave and get 100 yards or so away and my fuel pump dies(didn't know it at the time). Motor turns over but nothing...dead in the water. The pontoon that had been beside us most of the day was leaving and offered to give us a pull. The ramp was about 4 miles away. Incredibly nice of them!

We start our journey at a blistering 2mph. We get a half mile into the pull and the sheriff/wildlife pulls us over and wants to check the driver. They give him some sobriety checks and because he admitted to a couple of beers over the course of the day. They put him on their boat in hand cuffs.

No breathalyser on board so they have to take him from his family to the sheriffs dept to administer test. They drove off.

To this day I don't know what the outcome was. He seemed completely sober to me or else I wouldn't have put the lives of my family in his hands at 2 mph.

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Our reservoir is unique in s 22' limit with a tube and lake lice ban, which really keeps the idiots out.

Yet the Ranger is out every day. He doesn't bother anyone and typically there isn't much he could nail anyone for...it's just annoying to have the Ranger watch. He has no issue with surfing it seems. They mainly nail people for swimming...you are allowed to do water sports but not swim. Only thing we have been nailed for is "swimming" behind our boat. And by swimming, wearing USCG jackets anchored in a cove, no other boats while holding onto the swim platform. F' that stupid rule and we still swim every time we go out.

Drinking is also band on our resevoir, yet the posted legal limit is .10, yet state driving is .08. So I can drive to the ramp legally drunk, hop in the boat and be legal, but get a ticket for having a beer on the boat. Brilliant. I promise I fill two growlers every time we go out - the Solo cups are for soda officer. Feel free to look for beer cans, lol.

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Hearing some of the stories really makes me cringe. Here in Colorado in the state parks you can have 0.32 beer legally. The Rangers are different on each State Park, some are really cool to the boating community and some are not. It's ruined my enjoyment of a couple cold beers on the lake after our legs are jello from riding.

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Surfing on the Columbia with my friend and regular crew member riding. Sherriff was watching us and we knew it. They watched us for his whole session with big binoculars. Then when he was done here they come. I was braced for some kind of interaction.... They pulled up and said that was absolutely the best riding they have seen on this river. They were pretty genuinely stoked.....

It was a pretty cool experience.

I have been approached one time on our home lake when an officer thought we may have passed to closely to a dock. He was probably right... Gave us a warning and it was over in less then 5 min.

Edited by Lance B. Johnson
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I was pulling my daughter on the ez ski trainer sitting on the rear lockers with my feet on the platform holding the rope for her (I do wear a life jacket when I do this). The sherrif boat was coming up behind us, then slowed down and was driving next to us. I was expecting them to pull me over and either get a ticket or a warning. They idled over when she was done and asked how old she was and told her what a great job she was doing. They said she was the youngest skier they had seen. I told them my son started at 18 months... they just laughed and said to have a good night.

We have a lot of different sherrifs on our water. Had it been someone else, I am not sure if this would have been the outcome...

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The warden isn’t out on the lake too often as he has to cover about 8 lakes and ours is by far the quietest. I’ve been pulled over twice years ago by them, once was my fault once was him thinking he had us. The first time we started riding about an hour before sunset and it lasted till about 20 minutes after sunset. Still completely bright out and you could see everything but the law states you can’t ride a half hour before sunset in Maine. That time was OK, I dealt with the ticket paid it and moved on from it. The warden was nice enough and we had a conversation about wakeboarding as we were the only ones on the lake who were wakeboarding at that time.

The next time we got pulled over was from a guy I’d never seen on the lake before and he was a pr***. He was trying to fish on 4th of July weekend in the middle of the lake right where everyone needs to go by. The fishing was fine, but every time he got annoyed by someone who bothered him while fishing he’d pull up his anchor and chase them down to read them the riot act. He didn’t bother with the drunk people tubing down the other end of the lake going too close to shore or weaving in and out of boats at 30+mph, just the ones who disturbed his fishing time. Well it was getting to about that, I board up and go for my ride. I finish up about 300 feet from him closer to the shore to stay out of the way for other boaters. I jump on the platform and look over and the warden has a **** eating grin on his face and we have no idea why since he’d been around us all day. He comes cruising over to the boat and about 30 feet away his grin disappears and all of a sudden he looks pissed. We figure that my dad was driving while my mom was slouched down with her head on the top of the observers seat so he probably thought we were riding without a spotter and he had us. Well he comes over all pissed off, goes through the whole boat, I mean everything all the way down to the horn and asking if we had a backup whistle (which we happen to in the safety kit even though it’s not required). The whole thing took about 20 minutes and at the end of it he just went OK and took off without saying a word. We were the only boat that we had seen that day where he stopped them for more than 5 minutes so I’m sure it was that he thought he had us and then was pissed when he didn’t. All in all not bad experience after reading some of these other stories and I’m happy we don’t have the wardens up here too much up our *****.

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I used to get stopped once a year. I know they saw and heard my boat thinking a boat full of teens blaring obnoxious music gotta be doing something wrong. we always were polite and showed every item required. I would always offer cold water and thank them for doing a great job at keeping the water safe (same lake as famous ghost rider guy...). Now they pass me and wave.

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Seems like a lot of you have pretty small lakes. Ours are usually big enough to where if you do see them you'll only see them once or maybe twice. With the exception of one lake, it's so big that there is about 10 of them running around but they're all cool and always wave and if you're doing something wrong, such as idling a tad too fast in a no wake (one no wake is almost 3 miles long) then they just hit their siren and give u a thumbs down and go on. It's s very political lake though. Lots of money and big names.

Edited by triscadek
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I haven't had a lake popo experience yet. On Lake Lanier we always went north of Browns Bridge, and they never ventured up that far. And on Lake Martin they only harass you on holiday weekends and I usually stayed away from there on those times. Smith Lake, our home base now, only has two, and I have only seem them as far over as my marina once. And I haven't heard bad things about them. (Other than they've supposedly used drone's before to fly over and spy in people's boats and see if the driver is drinking a beer or not.) Which is why I always use a solo cup, and keep my vodka in an unmarked water bottle.

Now that I've said that, I'm probably going to get harassed, say something sarcastic and end up in jail this weekend. :/

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Do people drink non-alcoholic beverages in solo cups? Seems like that would be the dead giveaway for a cop

Actually, I do lol. I usually make up a gallon of tea and toss it in the cooler and drink it from a solo cup throughout the day. To me, liquor of any form and 100+ heat just doesn't mix... Unless it's a cold margarita on the rocks. ?

I've learned liquor can get a normal beer drinker into trouble real quick. Now beer, I can run for 10-12 hours easy provided someone else (trustworthy) is at the helm and sober ?

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Problem we have on our lake is that we have 4 different jurisdictions on one lake. What one agency enforces, the others don't. They have all been very cordial with us. I have been stopped for under aged spotter (my son is 10, age requirement is 13) and jumping off a 30 ft cliff. Both circumstances came with a warning with no additional safety inspections and we were on our way. I have made it a point that if it's convenient, I will approach them to ask then some safety questions, even though I know the answer, in which they answer and hand me a rules and regulations book. When we see them, they waive when we see them the rest if the day. Our LEO only seems to be out on the weekends. We usually ride on weekdays so we have very limited exposure.

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Do people drink non-alcoholic beverages in solo cups? Seems like that would be the dead giveaway for a cop

I do all the time. Have a hard plastic solo cup with a lid. I use it for anything that comes in a can so I can keep it from spilling. Redbull (with and without the extra sauce), sprite, etc.

I also use plastic bottles with caps whenever possible. Most of the time I have propel and sprite (clear liquids, so no staining if they're spilled) so there are lots of those plastic bottles on board if we ever get pulled over. Never glass, and I never have beer (although my passengers might) - but we make them put it out of sight in the cooler.

We're drinkers, but as far as drinkers go, we're responsible lake drinkers. (mostly because I don't want to accidentally kill someone because I got hammered... oh, or get a DUI.)

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Wow, saw this topic last week and thought nothing of it.....This is what I got Monday on the Colorado river.....

My family (wife and I both 46, daughter and friend 14, and son 17 him surfing w/o rope) and I on the river surfing, no music super light traffic day as in no boats for 5-10 minutes at a time got pulled over by AZ dept. of fish and game. Guy had total attitude from minute 1.

I asked why we were stopped and his response was my son was surfing too close to the back of the boat!!!! WHAT???? Then started to lecture me that teak surfing was illegal, due to co2 and plus its dangerous because my son might fall into the prop!...I say he can't fall into the prop because its 3 feet under my boat not including the swim step and I say yea I know that teak surfing is illegal and I would never allow anybody to do that and explained that "Surfing is not teak surfing" He says no matter we can't do it. So I then ask him what is the legal distance we have to be behind the boat? He says there is no set limit (BTW my son was standing/surfing and the tip of his board going from 4-8 feet behind the swim step, 24 MXZ with full ballast plus 500 lbs in each locker, nice fat wave)

He doesn't do a safety check, no nothing, I had everything anyway and I think he knew it.

I kept pestering him...WAIT A MINUTE...this is a water sport and I have been doing it for over 5 years on this very river, every time we surf we see others doing it as well, hell my house is on the river and I watch people doing it everyday Im out here....WHAT DOES THE LAW SAY???? He can't/won't answer me....Im getting testy now and my wife tells me to calm down and let it go...He says keep him further back from the boat or don't surf anymore.

I went back to the house and looked up the law...AZ I can't find one..CA says teak surfing and "BODY SURFING" are illegal, nothing else and no distance limit etc. I am now going to copy and laminate this and keep it in my boat and the next time this jack a.. or another one tries this I will be more than glad to show them what the law actually says...

BTW we went back out and surfed Monday afternoon, and all day Tuesday and were passed a couple times by San Bernardino Sheriffs on the water, so I don't know what this guys trip was!

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My son recently took a day long boating class offered by the coast gaurd. The sheriff was there as well and he explained something that made a ton of sense to me. He said that he personally was a full time guy. 100 percent on the water. Because boating volume increases in the summer there are a bunch of part timers on the water. He was honest he said those guys don't really know the regs....

For what it's worth.

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No issues here the police on my lake are my neighbours at the Marina, they know my boat, they know myself, my wife and my kids. They also know I have all my gear. Unless its a busy holiday weekend they are relaxing at the dock waiting for something to happen.

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Well I think I showed I was not breaking the law and gave NO legit reason to pull me over....so what should I do or have done differently? I think he just had a stick up his A..

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