"I was very surprised," said Carl Bradow, who owns Bradow's Dock Service in Nisswa with his wife. "I went to seminars and other training and listened to information about them and I would have never guessed it would have gone from that few last year to that many this year."

Bradow said last year his crews found zebra mussels at just two jobs - one on Booming Out Bay and the other on Schaefer's Point, where about 40 mussels were found.

"This year we just started and they are on 95 percent of the places, and there are thousands," Bradow said. "The pipes and the boat lifts - there are too many to count."

And it's still early in the season to take boat lifts and docks out of the water, Bradow said. Entire dock foot pads have been totally covered.

Bradow said he had found zebra mussels throughout the main lake, including Steamboat and Wilson bays.

He said of three jobs done as of this week on Nisswa Lake, no zebra mussels had yet been found. And his crews hadn't yet been to Lake Margaret, the channels, Upper Gull, Bass, Spider, Roy or Love lakes.

"On Gull, there isn't a spot they're not," Bradow predicted.

Rosemary Goff, a Gull Chain of Lakes Association board member, said that group would like to see stronger aquatic invasive species (AIS) laws and stronger requirements for boat washing to prevent the spread of AIS from lake to lake.

"This is bad enough. What's more frightening is we've been told there are at least 40 more invasives coming this direction that could affect the lake," Goff said.

"We've lost the zebra mussel battle but we've got to keep out the rest of them that are coming this way," she said.