Welcome to the Moonee Ponds Creek Fishing Guide. Moonee Ponds Creek is a truly unique urban fishing destination that runs along with the 19 kilometre Moonee ponds creek trial. It’s a simple narrow creek the trail itself runs along the creek and is heavily used by walkers and cyclists. The trail starts along the Yarra River right next to the Docklands on the fringes of Melbourne CBD and runs all the way around the Tullamarine freeway passing Pascoe vale and finishes around Flemington passing through areas such as Moonee Ponds and Essendon. The trail has had some needed upgrades in 2018. For fishing, it offers anglers bream, mullet and trevally. There is known to have poor water quality through this creek so you would want to be very careful before choosing to eat any caught fish from this creek. You would also want to wash your hands and gear heavily after a fishing session at this destination. Anglers have also noted snake sightings as a regular occurrence.
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Things to do at Moonee Ponds
The creek trail is an amazing cycling destination. 19.3 kilometres of pathed tracks that go up hills, under bridges and along the river. starts along the Yarra River right next to the Docklands on the fringes of Melbourne CBD and runs all the way around the Tullamarine freeway passing Pascoe vale and finishes around Flemington passing through areas such as Moonee Ponds and Essendon. It’s also a great spot for walking. Moonee Ponds is a vibrant township full renowned for great shopping on Puckle Street. Mount Alexander road features historic buildings, old churches and restaurants. Nearby attractions include Queens Park, clocktower centre. Whilst in surrounding suburbs you can visit the Flemington racecourse and Maribyrnong river.
Fishing Moonee Ponds River Trail
It’s an interesting location for fishing. Towards the entrance, the creek holds good numbers of bream, mullet and trevally. Towards the far then the creek holds a lot of carp & eels. Do take note of the water quality which isn’t the greatest. We would highly encourage catch and release fishing here instead of taking something home to eat. You can have success fishing with baits using shrimp, yabbies, scrub worms, prawns, sandworms, maggots, mussels, & chicken. Click here to see our full guide for bait fishing for Bream. We recommend reading our guide on the best lures to catch bream. Options include imitation crabs, grub style soft plastics, minnow style soft plastics, shallow diving hard body lures, blades and vibes.
The choice of lures is almost endless to make things easier we created a detailed video on the best lures and how to use them.
recommended baits Moonee Ponds Creek
- yabbies
- Scrub worms
- sandworms
- maggots
- mussels
- bardi grubs
- pilchards
- prawns
Recommended lures and soft plastics Moonee Ponds Creek
- Cranka crab
- Zman slim Swimz
- Berkley powerbait grub
- Damiki Monster Miki 2.5 sp
- Jackall Chubby
- Savage Gear Fathead Crank
- Daiwa Bait Junkie 2.5 inch grub
- Gulp 3 inch minnow
- Daiwa Bait Junkie paddle tail minnow
- Zman grubZ
- Squidge wrigglers
- eco gear ZX40
- Daiwa Double Clutch
- EcoGear SX40
- Squidges biotough grub
- Nories laydown minnow
- StrikePro cyber vibe
- Pro lure live yabby
- OSP bent minnows
Targeting Bream at Moonee Ponds River
This is a great location to target bream with lures and soft plastics. The options available are almost endless so make sure you read our guide on the best lures to catch bream. Recommended options include crab imitation, shallow diving cranks, paddle tail soft plastics, curl tail soft plastics, minnow imitations, vibes, and blades. Also, try your luck with surface lures which is an exciting form of fishing with light gear. Bream is all about finesse fishing so you will need an ultralight spin outfit. We recommend a 7-foot rod in a 1-3 or 2-4 kilo class, paired with a 1000, 2000 or 2500 reel spooled with 2-6-pound braid and equivalent leader. There are so many amazing bream outfits on the market and budgets vary greatly depending on your skill level and spending habits.
Bream reside within the structure such as jetty pylons and stumps. Enticing them away from the structure onto your lure will take some time to master. Remember to work your lures and plastics slowly and mix up the retrieval techniques. If your targeting bream with bait than we would highly recommend sandworms, maggots, scrub worms, mussels, yabbies, & chicken. A 2-4 kilo class rod paired with a 2500 size reel would be a great option spooled with 6-pound line. We would encourage you to read our detailed guide on Bait fishing for Bream.
We recommend watching our guide on great lures to catch bream.
Targeting Estuary Perch at Moonee Ponds River
Another highlight of fishing in this area is targeting Estuary perch with surface and shallow diving lures. The action can be frantic on warm balmy evenings with low wind. listen for the sound of breaking water which indicates EPs are feeding. The excitement an angler gets from an EP smashing a surface lure on light gear is something that truly needs to be experienced. It almost catches you by surprise when that aggressive strike comes. Small surface poppers, cicadas, blades, surface minnows and pencil lures work well here. So do shallow diving hardbody lures. Noteworthy options include bent minnows, Rapala countdown series, nories laydown minnows and shallow diving cranks. Basically, anything that doesn’t dive too deep and makes a good vibrating action will work well. You can use any colour choice we often start with silvers that mimic small baitfish or mullet.
EPs also respond incredibly well to a whole range of soft plastics lightly weighted. Including curl tails, paddle tails and minnow imitations. The trusty 2.5-inch grubs and minnows an excellent choice. These imitate small baitfish that the EPs are actively feeding on. We would recommend mixing up the retrieval speeds and pauses and playing around with different colours. Where possible fish along the structure and stay alert for signs such as breaking water. Fishing for Estuary Perch requires finesse. We recommend an ultralight fishing combo consisting of a 1-3 or 2-4 kilo spin rod around 7 foot in length. Coupled with a 1000 or 2000 size reel spooled with 2-8 pound line and equivalent fluorocarbon leader. When bait fishing uses a 2-4 kilo rod around 7 foot in length. Coupled with a 2500 size reel either a float or small running sinker to a swivel and very fine leader.
Images of fish supplied VFA and DEPI. All other images and videos shown on the Moonee Ponds Creek Fishing Guide are Fishing Mad originals.
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