Welcome to the Brimbank Park Fishing Guide. Brimbank Park is located 15 kilometres from Melbourne on the Calder freeway in the suburb of Keilor. It’s well known for its scenic walking and cycling trails along the river. It’s also popular for school groups on programs such as orienteering. It does, however, have a picturesque river that runs through it providing anglers with some big size carp and redfin. There is adequate parking at the bottom after a couple of minutes drive down the circling roadway over many speed humps. Brimbank Park is open seven days a week 6.00am – 5.30pm / 6.00am – 8.00pm during Daylight Savings
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Things to do at Brimbank Park
It’s a great spot to take the kids with multiple adventure playgrounds, with artistic and interactive sculptures. For families, there are bbq facilities, walking and cycling trails, toilets, and sheltered areas. There is also active animal life with rabbits, lizards, birds and yes snakes. It’s often a spot where school grounds take kids on orienteering programs and aboriginal culture learnings near lizard cafe. It’s also a great location for picnics and walking the dog. It’s also a good spot to launch a kayak and venture up the river. You can see the latest rules of the park from the city of Brimbank website. I have had several close encounters with brown snakes at Brimbank park so do be careful.
Watch a video of us fishing for eels, redfin and estuary perch at Brimbank park
Fishing at Brimbank Park
Running through Brimbank park is the outer reaches of the Maribyrnong River. This area is mainly freshwater and home to carp, redfin, brown trout and eels. Carp will be your most frequent catch and they can grow to enormous sizes in this area. Most of the fishing will be done land-based but you can also take a kayak in certain areas.
When targeting redfin we recommend fishing with a light spinning rod. This will make the experience more enjoyable and improve your catch rates. We suggest a 1-3 or 2-4 kilo fishing rod. Coupled with a 2000, 2500 or 3000 size reel that’s been spooled with a decent quality braid between 4-8 pound. Then finished with roughly a rod length of a quality fluorocarbon leader. Good bait options will include worms, maggots, live minnows and mudeye. Either on a light running sinker rig, paternoster rig or suspended from a float.
For soft plastics, we highly recommend small curl tails, minnow imitations, and paddle tails. Both natural and bright colours work well rigged with jig heads from 1/18 through to 1/20 in weight. Small shallow diving hard body lures are also very effective in this system. As are old favourites such as spinners and Tassie devils. Ideally in smaller sizes and nice bright colours. Check out our guide on the Best lures for catching Redfin
Watch our detailed video guide on our top 10 redfin lures below
If you plan on targeting carp from the banks then we would recommend using Corn kernels, worms, maggots or bread as good bait options. Either on a basic running sinker rig or suspended from a float. There are some huge carp at Brimbank park so it would also be wise to upgrade your fishing outfit to something a little heavier. Perhaps a 3-5 kilo fishing rod coupled with a 3000 size reel spooled with 8-pound line as a good starting point.
Have a look at this video which runs you through how to catch carp. It covers setup, rigging techniques and baits and some helpful tips.
Recommended baits Brimbank Park
- Corn
- Scrub worms
- maggots
Recommended lures Brimbank Park
- Bluefox spinners
- Daiwa DR joint minnows
- Daiwa Bait Junkie 2.5 inch grub
- Berkley powerbait grub
- Tasmanian Devil Blade
- Bullet lures 3cm lure
- strike tiger nymph
- Rapala countdown floating minnow
- Daiwa Double Clutch
- Tasmanian Devil lure
- Gulp 3 inch minnow
- Zman 2.5 inch grub
- Dawia Bait Junkie paddle tail minnow
- Squidges biotough grub
Targeting Carp at Brimbank Park
There is a large volume of carp in local lakes however they are fun to catch and you can learn more about catching carp read our detailed guide to carp fishing around Victoria. When targeting carp standard baits such as corn, bread, and maggots work great for carp here. Using a simple running sinker rig with a pea-size sinker works great in this area. So, do suspend baits using a float. We have also fished well using unweighted baits. You can also target carp with hard body lures and soft plastics. This is a difficult technique that generally requires sight casting. This means spotting a nearby carp and casting right in there are and working the lure of plastic slowly hoping they will strike. It’s tough but very rewarding when you catch a carp using this method. Most however will stick to targeting them with bait.
For rod selection, a 3-5 kilo rod coupled with a 4000 size reel is very suitable. You could even fish a little heavier with rods designed for snapper that are generally 4-7 kilo 7 foot in length. For fun, I have caught some monster size carp using a 2-4 kilo rod and 6-pound braid. But I am prepared to lose some good fish in the process. We like to target carp on sundown, particularly in the warmer months. This is often when you see carp swimming along the edges or jumping out of the water around September-November which is their spawning season. European carp must not be returned to the water. Always carry your Victorian fishing license.
A simple yet effective fishing rig here is to thread a small running sinker through the mainline shown in blue, which is usually around 8 pounds. Then tie a medium swivel to the end allowing the sinker to run up the mainline freely. Then tie on the other end of the swivel 50cm of 8-pound fluorocarbon leader (the leader is shown in grey ). Finished with a hook. I generally use a size 6 bait keeper hook or size 10 long shank which is perfect for corn kernels or scrub worms, however, you can also use small treble style hooks which is a better setup if you using bread.
If you get snagged up then you can also use a float rig. Attach a quill or bubble float to your mainline. Thread the line through and adjust the length using a size 6 bait keeper hook or size 10 long shank to keep your bait suspended at a good depth. Ideally cast down breeze which will stop the float from coming back to you. If you’re not getting bites then adjust the line depth and If necessary add a splint shot to add weight.
Targeting Redfin at Brimbank Park
We recommend targeting redfin with a light spin outfit. This will make the experience more enjoyable and improve your catch rates. A 1-3 or 2-4 kilo fishing rod coupled with a 2000, 2500 or 3000 reel spooled with 4-8-pound braid and equivalent fluorocarbon leader should be perfect.
Redfin respond really well to lures and soft plastics so do check our guide on the best lures for catching Redfin When using soft plastics, we highly recommend curl tails, minnow imitations, and paddle tails in both natural and bright colours. Rigged with a jig head that’s 1/8 through to 1/20 in weight. The most effective way to use these is to cast towards visible structure and slow roll the soft plastic with lifts and pauses for the retrieve.
Shallow diving hard body lures, blades and vibes are also very effective in this system. So are traditional spinners and Tassie devils in bright colours. Metal spoons also play a role allowing you to cast great distances and target the bigger size reddies. Just remember they are quite heavy and very prone to snags in small inland systems like this one.
Targeting Trout at Brimbank Park
We would highly recommend that you read our detailed guide on how to catch trout which details our favourite lures, baits and techniques. You can follow trout stocking timelines by reading the Victorian trout stocking guide as part of the target 1 million by 2020 and 10 million by 2022 initiatives.
When targeting trout with lures we recommend using shallow diving hard body minnows, metal spoons, spinners, Tassie devils and soft plastics which are also very effective on trout. If your bait fishing, then Mudeye, scrub worms, power bait, yabbies and minnows suspended from a float or a running sinker rig are great options when targeting trout at this location. Trout are more active in cold conditions with most catches on the first and last light of the day.
We recommend targeting trout with a 1-3 or 2-4 kilo fishing rod coupled with a 1000, 2000, or 2500 reel spooled with 4-8-pound braid and equivalent fluorocarbon leader. If there are larger trophy size trout around then you can go heavier moving up the scale to a 3-5 kilo class spin rod spooled with fine 8-12-pound braid and equivalent fluorocarbon leader.
We conducted a test to see which would perform better for stocked trout powerbait or lures. Watch the video below to find out the results which were interesting.
Images of fish supplied VFA and DEPI. All images and videos shown on this page are Fishing Mad originals.
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