Steamboat Pond heats up for Free Fishing Day
Photos by RALPH BARTHOLDT/Press Larry Koscich, of Kellogg, with three of the six-fish limit of rainbow trout he caught at Steamboat Pond Wednesday using worms on snelled hooks. He clipped the leaders to his fishing line with a snap swivel. “I just remove them when I clean them,” to avoid having to unhook while he is fishing, he said.
Steamboat Pond, located 11 miles upstream of Enaville, will be one of the spots where the Idaho Department of Fish and Game will be on hand Saturday for the state’s annual Free Fishing Day. The pond has been stocked with rainbow trout for the event.
By RALPH BARTHOLDT
Staff Writer
Early Wednesday an osprey clucked from a cottonwood and the tree’s fluffy seeds drifted over Steamboat Pond like goose down.
There was little traffic on the Coeur d’Alene River Road, and the pond’s parking lot near the 11-mile marker of the forest highway that follows the North Fork of the Coeur d’Alene River upstream from Enaville was empty.
Larry Koscich was the first one to park.
The semi-retired construction worker from Kellogg had heard about Steamboat for a long time, but thought, maybe it was an alpine lake and he didn’t know how to find it.
As an avid mountain biker, riding his bicycle on a hiking trail to a fishing hole seemed like a good idea.
“I don’t know why I like riding my bike into gnarly places, but it gives me satisfaction,” he said.
The only thing: Steamboat Pond, an Idaho Department of Fish and Game family fishing water, is so close to the forest highway you can sing along with the radios of the cars that go by.
Besides Koscich’s silver economy model, there were few cars on the road and when he pulled his gear from the passenger seat and walked the path to one of the casting bays on the 3-acre pond, he explained why he had come back.
“Yesterday I couldn’t catch anything,” Koscich said.
When he was told where to find the pond, he drove out with some bobbers and worms but didn’t get a bite.
He tried lures too.
“Nothing,” he said. “I just thought, there aren’t any fish in here.”
Someone told Koscich, who likes to smoke the steelhead and salmon he catches each year — that the state fisheries department had stocked trout in the pond — so he kept fishing and switched his presentation.
“I had to do some experimenting,” he said. “I just kept trying.”
He took the bobber off his line, and snapped on an Eagle Claw snelled hook — they come in packs of six from the store — letting the rig sink to the bottom and immediately got a take.
From there on, he couldn’t keep the put-and-take rainbows off his line.
He returned Wednesday morning for more action.
“I just thought I’d get six and then I’ll fire up the smoker,” he said.
Within an hour, he hooked six fish, lost two and inadvertently returned one to the pond before it was attached to the stringer. The limit at Steamboat is six keepers, and everything Koscich hauled in was over 12 inches long.
Which means he’ll probably return tomorrow, or find another spot, maybe one he can access with his mountain bike, to catch more keepers for his smoker.