Fishing in Lake Eildon National Park

Lake Eildon National Park wraps around much of the foreshore and hinterland of one of Victoria's largest reservoirs, sitting in the ranges northeast of Melbourne where the Great Dividing Range begins to flatten toward the Murray basin.

The park is not a remote wilderness fishery — it's a working reservoir surrounded by national park land, and the two are inseparable when you're planning a trip. The lake itself is the anchor.

At roughly 43 square kilometres of surface and a maximum depth around 79 metres, it holds brown trout, redfin perch, roach, carp, and Macquarie perch. Brown trout here can reach 4 kg, growing large by feeding on the reservoir's baitfish populations.

A fixed river marker in the lake divides the water into two management zones with different rules for Murray cod and trout fishing — north of the marker is open year-round to both species, while different conditions apply south of it.

Check current Victorian Fisheries Authority rules before you rig up, because the details matter and they change. Spring and autumn are the productive windows. Summer water temperatures push fish deep and make surface fishing difficult.

Winter is cool but fishable, particularly for trout.

The shoreline runs to around 145 km, which means there's more bank to read than most anglers will cover in a weekend — the park's campgrounds at Jerusalem Creek, Devils Cove, Candlebark, and Lakeside put you close to the water without a long drive each morning.

Jerusalem Creek is worth singling out. It feeds into the lake from within the park and has enough character to fish on its own terms, particularly in the cooler months when trout move into the shallower inflows.

The creek campground there makes it a practical base.

Other small tributaries — Dry Creek, Woolshed Creek, Long Creek, Cummings Creek — drain the park's forested slopes into the reservoir, and the mouths of these creeks can concentrate fish, especially after rain.

A Victorian Recreational Fishing Licence is required.

Check with Parks Victoria and the Victorian Fisheries Authority for any park-specific conditions before your visit — rules around boat access, camping, and species protections apply here, and Macquarie perch in particular are a protected species in these waters.

Lake Eildon fishes best when you treat it as a big-water problem: read the wind, work the edges, and give the inflow creeks attention in the cooler months.

The park doesn't make the fishing easier, but it keeps the foreshore in better shape than it would otherwise be.