A 1992 provincial fisheries survey put Steamboat at 4.6 hectares, with a maximum depth of 9 m and a mean depth of 3.5 m, an alkaline pH of 8.3 and a Secchi reading of 3.5 m. An earlier 1970 reconnaissance survey recorded a clearer 6.4 m Secchi reading, suggesting some drop in water clarity between the two visits, though depth and area were not measured that first time. Shallow and even, with no deep basin to hold fish through the warmest weeks, Steamboat reads as classic small East Kootenay stillwater: what structure exists is shoal and weed edge, not a cold, deep refuge.

No dedicated fishing report or guide coverage has surfaced for Steamboat Lake. Given its size and depth, it fishes on the same lines as other small, shallow East Kootenay stillwaters: chironomid under an indicator worked over the whole basin rather than a single drop-off, since there is no deep water to concentrate fish, plus leech and attractor retrieves along the shoal edges as the season warms. chironomids, leeches and scuds are the general stillwater forage base to expect in a lake of this depth and clarity; general small-lake stillwater tactics are a reasonable starting point until a Steamboat-specific report turns up.

No confirmed boat launch, parking area or trailhead has been found for Steamboat Lake. Treat it as an access-check water: confirm a put-in and any private-land or seasonal restrictions locally before committing a day to it. The general area, between Frances Creek and Steamboat Mountain west of the Columbia Valley, is backroad country reached off the Radium Hot Springs or Brisco crossings of Highway 95, the same road network that serves Forster Creek and its tributaries.

For a small lake like this, the release record is the fishing report. Provincial hatchery records run from 1961 to 2026 and log 47 releases, totalling roughly 118,500 fish, entirely rainbow trout. Early decades ran a mix of strains, Beaver, Premier, Pennask, Tunkwa, Genier, Badger and Fraser Valley, released as fry and fingerlings. The modern program, stable since 2006, is a Pennask-strain yearling plant of about 500 fish via the Beaver hatchery roughly every other spring, most recently 500 fish on 2026-05-21. The full year-by-year release history is below.