Boating season is officially over on Lake Leelanau. The Lake Leelanau Lake Association announced Tuesday that it had officially closed all four of its boat wash stations for the season.

“Compared to 2024, we saw a 37 percent increase in contacts made with boaters and a 110 percent increase in the number of boats washed,” the Lake Association shared in a Facebook post. “Clean boats preserve a clean lake and we'll open our stations again in the spring to prevent the introduction of [aquatic invasive species] to Lake Leelanau.”

In 2021, the Lake Leelanau Lake Association teamed up with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians to install the first-ever boat wash station on Lake Leelanau. That first station was implemented at the Bingham launch, the busiest of Lake Leelanau’s 11 public boat launches. The project was a response to Eurasian watermilfoil, which was first identified in Lake Leelanau in 2019.

Fast-forward to 2025 and Lake Leelanau now has three additional boat wash stations: one at the Narrows, a second at the boat launch off South Lake Shore Drive in Cedar, and a third at the Suelzer Park boat launch. More information about the program can be found here.