Welcome to the Lake Lonsdale Fishing Guide. Lake Fyans is a 2.5-hour drive from Melbourne, past Ballarat and Horsham heading towards Stawell. Roughly a 10-minute drive from the Grampians National Park and Halls Gap. A beautiful country setting along the picturesque mountains of Halls Gap and the Grampians. Lake Lonsdale provides exceptional year-round fishing for large redfin. The lake has a beautiful backdrop of the picturesque mountains of the Grampians. It has plenty of structure and that’s why fish are thriving and growing to great sizes here.

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Things to do at Lake Lonsdale

This is a good location to take the family and unplug in a beautiful country setting. There are several good accommodation spots and you are close to Halls Gap and Stawell. Nearby attraction includes halls gap zoo, Mackenzies Falls, Silverband Falls, Venus loop walks, Grampians helicopter flights, wine tours, rock climbing, and bushwalking. This whole area is great for fishing, it’s not just Lake Fyans but you also have surrounding lakes including Lake Bellfield, Rocklands Reservoir, Lake Lonsdale and Wartook Reservoir

Watch as we fish Lake Lonsdale at an overnight stay at the Grampians

Fishing Lake Lonsdale

At Lake Fyans you can catch

  • Redfin
  • Trout
  • Yellowbelly ( Golden Perch )

Lake Lonsdale is a great destination to catch a trophy-size redfin. Over the years we have seen many refind caught over 50cms. It’s a shallow system with clean water that has many snags, timber trees and weed beds home to brown trout and, rainbow trout as well as redfin, and tench.  It’s a prime location to fish with a kayak or small boat whilst there is an extensive sandy beach for land-based anglers and unbelievable potential for those who enjoy fly fishing. Land-based fishing can be a tad challenging as it is very shallow and often weedy from the banks. When fishing from a boat or kayak concentrate your time and effort casting lures towards visible structure and depth changes. Many of the largest fish are often caught amongst the timber. The trick here is to present a lure or soft plastic in close and tempt the bigger ones out of the structure they are residing in for a reaction strike.

Trolling is a popular fishing technique here. Working shallow/mid diving lures and even soft plastics along the edges of any visible structure. This can be done on a small boat or even a kayak. Lures of plastics with bright flashing colours or that make sound work really well.

Historically water levels have been quite low but this hasn’t prevented the system from fishing well. When the water levels are up fishing from the banks can be very good. Some helpful fishing tips to keep in mind when fishing at Lake Lonsdale include using your sounder to monitor temperature changes as redfin will generally stick to zones that are a degree or two warmer. This is often along the edges or shallow weed lines and we generally concentrate our time casting towards the banks as opposed to fishing the middle deeper areas. Also when using your sounder keep an eye on depth changes, weed lines and any visible structure which is often where schools of redfin will reside. Trout and Redfin are notorious for feeding more heavily at Dawn and Dusk. My personal favourite is fishing the sundown.

Watch this video of FishingMad fishing the Grampians

Lake Lonsdale Gear selection

Good gear selection here would include a 2-4 or 2-5 kilo spin rod coupled with a 2000 or 2500 size reel spooled with 4-8-pound braid and equivalent fluorocarbon leader. Nice and light to enjoy the experience but heavy enough to land a good size fish as there are plenty of good ones in this system. If you intend to flick bigger chatter baits and swimbaits you can also use a light baitcast outfit.

Trolling Tassie Devils, stump jumpers and minnow imitations such as the Daiwa double clutch at different depths is a great way to fish Lake Fyans. We have also had great success fishing with a range of soft plastics & lures. Click here to see our best lures & plastics to catch redfinIf 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. Berleying an isolated area and fishing in that one spot is also a great idea when bait fishing.

Fishing the Grampians – 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,

Watch the video below chasing big redfin and trout at Halls Gap the Grampians. 

 

Recommended fishing lures Lake Lonsdale

Soft Plastics

  • ZMan Slim SwimZ paddle tail with an attached TT Jig Spinner
  • Tasmanian Devil Blade
  • Daiwa Double Clutch
  • Tackle Tactics Vortex Spinner Bait in 1/4oz
  • Daiwa Bait Junkiw 2.5 inch grub
  • Tasmanian Devil lure
  • Gulp 3-inch minnow
  • Zman 2.5 inch grub
  • Daiwa Bait Junkie paddle tail minnow
  • Jackall TN50
  • Zerek fish trap
  • Jackall transams
  • Samaki vibelicious
  • eco gear ZX40
  • Savage Gear Fathead crank shallow diving
  • stump jumpers

Recommended baits Lake Lonsdale

Bait Choices

  • Scrub worms
  • Powerbait
  • Yabbies
  • Mudeye
  • live minnow
  • maggots

Targeting Redfin at Lake Lonsdale

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 slowly 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 in 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.

Watch our detailed video guide on our top 10 redfin lures below

 

 

Targeting Trout at Lake Lonsdale

Trout

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 when trout will be stocked using the Victorian trout stocking programs as part of the target 1 million by 2020 and 10 million by 2022 initiatives.

When using lures, we would recommend shallow diving hard body minnows, metal spoons, spinners, and Tassie devils. Soft plastics are also very effective on trout. If you are bait fishing, then Mudeye, scrub worms, power bait, yabbies and minnows suspended on a float or a running sinker rig is a great choice when targeting trout here. Fly fishing is a popular fishing method 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 we recommend 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. If there are trophy size trout around then you could 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.

Images of fish supplied VFA and DEPI. All images and videos shown on the Lake Lonsdale Fishing Guide are Fishing Mad originals. Thank you for visiting the Lake Fyans 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