Welcome to the Calembeen Park Fishing Guide. Calembeen Park is located in the lovely rural town of Creswick next to the local caravan park. This is a great tranquil spot with picnic grounds and is close to the local wool mills. It’s also close to surrounding towns such as Ballarat and Daylesford and an ideal fishing location for the family.
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Things to do at Calembeen Park
A lovely picnic ground setting with electric BBQs, picnic tables, toilet facilities and scenic walks. The location has a swimming pool and historic diving platforms. However, it’s a lovely scenic spot to take the family and kids for a picnic lunch and fish. There are also available water activities in the smaller lakes. The township of Creswick has plenty to offer with local markets, golf course, horse riding trails, wineries, walking tracks, playgrounds, sports tracks, cafes and shops.
Watch our detailed video guide on our top 10 redfin lures below
Fishing at Calembeen Park
At Calembeen Park Lake you can catch
- Redfin ( English Perch )
- Rainbow trout
- Yellowbelly (Golden Perch)
- Carp
This is a friendly family fishing location in the central highlands. Recently the Hepburn Shire Council and VFA added new Merbau hardwood decking which acts as good fishing platforms. Calembeen Park has 3 deep lakes, with no.2 (or the front lake) being the smaller of the pair and used mostly for fishing and kayaking. It’s regularly stocked with school holiday rainbow trout and has also been stocked with yellowbelly fingerlings in recent years. With a walking track around the lakes, public toilets and a handy location only a short walk from the heart of town, it’s a fishing spot with something for the family can enjoy.
Calembeen Park Lake is a shallow system in Creswick where you can target several freshwater fish species. Notable the main species caught here is redfin but also rainbow trout and yellowbelly regularly are stocked before school holidays. Use this link to follow Victorian trout stocking programs. If you are fishing with bait then we would recommend using power bait in bright colours, live minnows, scrub worms, maggots and mudeye under a float, paternoster rig or a small running sinker rig. When fishing with lures and soft plastics we would strongly suggest starting with small soft plastics including curl tails and paddle tails, spinners and shallow diving hard body lures. For more suggestions read our guide on the Best lures and soft plastics to catch redfin
Redfin is more active in the warmer months whilst trout are more active during the cooler months. Most freshwater species have a tendency to feed more aggressively at Dawn and Dusk. My personal favourite is fishing the sundown particularly in the warmer months.
Check out this video highlighting how to target stocked rainbow trout.
Fishing Gear Guide for Calembeen Park
For trout and redfin a 2-4 kilo or 2-5 kilo spin rod coupled with a 2000 or 2500-size spin reel spooled with 6-10 pound braid and equivalent fluorocarbon leader is a great option. It’s nice and light so you can enjoy the experience but heavy enough to land a decent fish. We have also had great success fishing with a range of soft plastics & lures. Click here to see our best lures & plastics to catch redfin. If bait fishing Mudeye, live minnow and power bait on a float is a great choice when targeting trout. Other good options include scrub worms and yabbies. I would do so using a very simple running sinker rig with a small hook or treble, and a small pea size sinker.
Here are some great fishing locations in the surrounding area.
You may also want to try these fantastic fishing locations which aren’t too far away including,
- Lauriston Reservoir
- Malmsbury
- Barkers Creek Reservoir
- Lake Daylesford
- Hepburn Lagoon
- Lake Wendouree ( Ballarat )
- Newlyns Reservoir
- Tullaroop Reservoir
- Cairn Curran Reservoir
Calembeen Park Fish Stocking
Calembeen park has been stocked with 7,000 fish since 1990
Recommended baits, Calembeen Park
- Scrub worms
- Mudeye
- Powerbait
- maggots
Recommended lures Calembeen Park
- Bluefox spinners
- Daiwa DR joint minnows
- Daiwa Bait Junkie 2.5 inch grub
- Savage Gear minnow blade
- Berkley powerbait grub
- Daiwa Presso minnows
- Tasmanian Devil Blade
- Bullet lures 5-0 minnow
- 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
- Savage Gear Fathead crank shallow diving
- Squidges biotough grub
Targeting Redfin at Calembeen 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 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 targeting 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 Calembeen Park
We recommend you read our 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 you’re 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.
Targeting Yellowbelly at Calembeen Park
Yellow belly is a beautiful freshwater fish found in this system and with a rich food source available the yellowbelly here grow to good sizes. Curltail and paddle tail soft plastics in black colours are standout choices so are soft vibes, blades, lipless crank-baits such as Jackall TN50 and TN60s. Other favourites are the reliable stump jumpers and spinnerbaits. Soft plastics work best on a 1/8 or 1/4 jig head slow-rolled or jigged along any structure. Even tie your boat or kayak up to trees and work the soft plastic adding noise by tapping the butt of your rod or by hitting the jig head into the timber. This brings out the predatory nature of the yellowbelly. Take advantage of down scan and side scan technologies on your sounder and spend some time moving between the structure to find the fish. Other lures can be worked amongst the timber but in general work well in open water being slow-rolled or trolled.
A light spin rod around 7 feet in length in 2-4 or 3-5 kilo paired with a 2000 or 2500 size reel. Spooled with 8-12 pound braid and an equivalent fluorocarbon leader. Light to Medium baitcaster combos is also a very popular choice when targeting Yellowbelly with spinnerbaits and larger lures. Good bait rigs include a paternoster rig with a small sinker at the bottom or a running sinker rig with scrub worms or yabbies.
Images of fish supplied VFA and DEPI. All other images and videos shown on the Calembeen Park Fishing Guide are Fishing Mad originals. Thank you for visiting the Calembeen Park Fishing Guide. If you feel this location guide is missing any key information or needs any corrections made, then please let us know by emailing our team at enquiries@fishingmad.com.au with specific details in the email. Thank you
