Macclesfield: Australian Rainbow Trout Farm

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Last month, Maria and her bf Daz roped us into a fishing day (catchafish!). Maria has set Daz 30 tasks to do before he turns 30 (30 before 30), and with one of them being “catch a fish and cook it”, we headed to the Rainbow Trout farm in Macclesfield.

I know, I know. Going to a fish farm to catch a fish. How bloody city can we get? But being total city to my core and never having fished before, I was quite happy to go to a fish farm. So we drove up to Macclesfield, having to take a little detour prior to Emerald as the Puffing Billy race meant that the road we wanted to take was closed. Detouring resulted in our GPS trying to send us down single lane unpaved dirt roads, not a route we would normally want to take. At one point, to Alastair’s frustration, the GPS said turn left, I said turn right, and Bro in the back seat told Alastair to go straight. (He turned the GPS off at that point, and I shut up and let Bro navigate!)

Eventually we arrived at the fish farm without driving off the road or killing one another. We met up with Maria and Daz and paid our entry fee of $6 pp, which covered the use of the park facilities, fishing rods and bait. Any fish caught is then paid by the weight. For rainbow trout it was (from memory) about $15-$20 per kg depending on the size and for Atlantic salmon it was about $25 per kg.

We started off at the Atlantic salmon pond and to Daz’s disappointment, Alastair got the first catch of the day. After Daz also caught a salmon, we decided it was all too easy and went to visit the lake.

Unlike the ponds, the lake was more like real fishing… i.e. we sat around for ages without a nibble. I got a nibble at one stage but lost it (have I mentioned that I had no idea what I was doing?).

Getting hungry, we cut our losses and headed to the easy trout ponds so we could all catchafish and have lunch. Finally, I caught a fish – look at that beauty! It was way too easy though, I put my hook in and literally a minute later I had caught a trout. Bro, Maria and Daz caught one each soon after and we were done with fishing for the day.

We decided to eat the salmon for lunch and take the trout home for later. They cleaned the fish (included in the entry price), and filleted the salmon (an extra $3) and we headed over to the picnic and bbq area.

The seats and bbqs were pretty grubby, so I was glad to see that Maz and Daz were prepared and had brought along aluminium foil for the bbq, and a tablecloth for the table.

Then it was time for Daz to shine. He marinated the salmon with oil and herbs.


And took control of the bbq.

When it was all ready, we tucked into the salmon with a couple of salads that Maz and I had brought along.

Mhmmmm fish.

After lunch there was dessert (of course). Maz had made a gorgeous pistachio cake with coffee mascarpone.

I had brought along a thermos of hot chocolate, so we finished our day with cake and hot chocolate.

We had a fun day, and now I can tick “catch a fish” off my life list. (Not that it was on it…) And we hot smoked the trout that we took home – it made for an absolutely fantastic dinner. The fish farm makes for a good day out if you’re a city person like me… 😉

[googleMap name=”Australian Rainbow Trout Farm” width=”600″ height=”300″ directions_to=”false”]26 Mulhalls Road, Macclesfield VIC 3782, Australia[/googleMap]

Australian Rainbow Trout Farm
26 Mulhalls Road
(03) 5968 4711
Web: www.fishfarm.com.au