On Walkabout At: Lake Eildon National Park

My wife and I decided to take up a new hobby and try out fishing.  So we went to Big W and bought a couple of fishing poles and some basic fishing supplies.  The next day we then drove up to Lake Eildon which is about a two hour drive north of Melbourne.  I hadn’t gone fishing in probably ten years while my wife hasn’t fished in about four years.  Needless to say we are total amateurs, but we were going to give it go.

Lake Eildon is a large lake and we decided to try fishing on the National Park side of the lake on it’s northern end.  The drive up to the lake was quite nice on a remote road that twists and turns through rugged hill country.  Once on top of the hills you have a bird’s eye view of the lake:

We drove down the hills towards the lake.  The Lake Eildon National Park area of the lake has many good campsites, BBQ facilities, and restrooms for those inclined to camp there.  My wife and I may do that in the future, but on this day we were just going to make a day trip out of this.  We followed the signs towards the boat ramp and from the boat ramp road you can go off road around the shore of the lake to look for a fishing spot.

The weather was beautiful with perfectly blue skies.  We really couldn’t ask for a better day.  We set up to go fishing near this tree:

The first dam was constructed in Eildon back in 1915 and larger dams were constructed over the years to improve the water storage capacity of the lake.  At full capacity Lake Eildon holds five times as much water as Sydney Harbor.  However, the water level has dropped so much in recent years due to the drop in rain fall and the increase in water demand that now trees and buildings that were once covered by the water are reappearing:

This picture here give you an idea of how much the water level has dropped on Lake Eildon over the years:

Despite the drop in water level Lake Eildon is still 50 kilometers long and 76 meters deep in most areas.  So there is still quite a bit of water in the lake.  Anyway we fished for about five hours that day in a few different spots and had a few nibbles, but we did not catch any fish:

Like I said before we are total amateurs, but I think when people we keep running their boats by where we were trying to fish probably didn’t help our chances:

Speed boats and house boats kept coming by our area so I think next time we come here we will try and find a more isolated area to avoid all the boat traffic.  We might not have been catching any fish but the pelicans that showed up near our spot sure were.  There was a group of three pelicans and we saw them actually catch  few fish:

Unfortunately we weren’t as lucky as the pelicans and went home empty handed, but we still had a great time at the lake.  The weather was beautiful and the scenery was great so it wasn’t a wasted day.  We definitely keep trying our luck at fishing and hopefully we will eventually catch something.

For more about Lake Eildon you can visit it’s official website here.