Fishing at Falls Park pond lures area youths

Falls Park teems with wildlife.

On a recent morning an osprey preened on its Ponderosa Pine perch as a mother duck led her ducklings across the pond and onto the grass in search of bugs. Nearby a turtle sunned itself on a rock and two Canada geese parents escorted their adolescent goslings around the water. Swallows dipped and darted across the pond’s surface in search of breakfast.

But it’s the trout that bring hordes of children to the pond’s edges.

Clutching fishing poles and buckets of bait, the kids arrive by foot, bicycle or in the backs of their parents’ minivans to the park on Fourth Avenue, west of Spokane Street.

Thirteen-year-old Evan Semerad likes that he can bike to Falls Park to fish.

“There’s this big, huge trout. He pops up out of the water every now and again,” Semerad said eyeing the water.

The Post Falls Parks and Recreation Department opened the fishing pond nine years ago to make fishing more available to area children and people with disabilities.

“You’ll see so many kids around town on bikes with fishing poles headed down there,” said Parks Department Director Dave Fair.

The park is the city’s second most popular, after Q’emiln Park.

The Falls Park pond is stocked by the Idaho Department of Fish and Game.

Cabinet Gorge Fish Hatchery Manager John Rankin said employees typically stock the pond with 1,000 fish before community fishing derbies and at least once a month in May, June and September. The pond gets too hot for trout in July and August, and since the hatchery doesn’t raise any warm water fish there’s nothing to stock the pond with in those months.

The Falls Park fishing pond isn’t without its issues, however.

Adults will at times come and fill coolers with fish even though the pond’s fish are intended for children and those with disabilities. Carelessly discarded fishing line can also be problematic for the ducks that live in the pond.

But by and large most who visit have a grand time whether they catch fish or not.

Angie McFadden brings her two sons to the park to fish.

“It’s fun for the kids,” McFadden said as she handed out bait and fishing weights to 13-year-old Jorey McFadden and 8-year-old Jeremy McFadden.

Jorey said he prefers fishing in the pond to fishing in the river.

“It’s a better place because there’s no flow in the water,” he said.

Angie McFadden said she also likes that it’s safer. “It’s better than the river, where kids could fall in.”

And then there’s the fact that after stocking times, fish are plentiful.

Stocking the pond costs about $600 to $700 each time.

That is money well spent, Rankin said.

“It’s been very successful. We get a lot of participation,” he said.

Fair agreed.

“It’s been a great partnership with the state,” he said.