you guys no anyway to find out who owns a boat by the registration numbers?

it is going to depend on the state

in WI if you find a boat on the river that is a float you would secure it and call DNR with the number they would track down the owner

there is an old jon boat near me at a storage place. its been there for several years and looks like it was last registered in 2018 i believe. i would just like to find out who owns it and see if they would be interested in selling it. i called the storage place and they wouldn't tell me as there getting paid to store it and would lose money if i bought it. i asked at the bmv and they said they couldn't tell me as that was classified information.

The boat reg numbers will be treated just like a car license plate so most state agencies will not provide you with the owner's information due to privacy. If you are friendly with your local warden, he might be willing to contact the boat owner and give him your information so that the owner can contact you if he desires. But that will depend on the warden. You could try slipping a note under the cover but it doesn't sound like this boat gets used very often so might be a while until you'd get any response. If you're desperate, you could post an ad in your local classifieds asking whoever owns the boat to contact you. Or try social media.

it would be nice to be friends with someone who worked at at a bmv or with a game warden. they probably wouldn't want to sell it anyway. lol

County Treasurer would know if they sell the tags they keep a record of it, at least here they do it that way.

here you get the registration stickers at the bmv.

Same thing then they know who its registered to.

oh they know who its registered too, they just won't tell you.

Lie.
Tell the motor vehicle people you backed into it and want to exchange insurance information.

If you know a lawyer, he'll have a friend on the police force he can find out from.

they would probably just tell me to call the police and have them go check it out. lol

you could try submitting an open records request for that boats number , they will tell you the price per page you set a cap on how much your willing to spend

you might get a hit

you should at least know up front how much it will cost to try

local PD had an interesting number in the revenue column for 2020 , apparently a lot of lawyers must have been slow they were making lots of open records requests enough that it was noticeably up from the previous year for open records request revenue

Your friend would have to not care about getting caught. We had a case several years ago where an LEO got busted for something similar.

Try the Coast guard.

"Try the Coast Guard",

It's cute you think they would have a clue...