The Sycan River is located in the Fremont National Forest in Southern Oregon. While it is called a river it more resembles a creek about 10 feet wide. The Sycan is home to Brookies, Rainbows and Bull Trout.
Brookies make up about 98% of the population (my guess). The river flows through what was once a beautiful forest of lodgepole and ponderosa pine. However there has been massive killing of the pines by the pine beetle. What once was a peautiful place is not near as scenic.
However it don’t appear the fishing has been overly damaged. Today I fished the Sycan & landed maybe 40 trout, all brookies none over a foot, but enough 10 inchers to bend my three weight.
It was an enjoyable day despite thunderstorms and a few mosquitos.
Attached are a couple of pictures, one of a typical brookie and the other an example of the damage to the forest.
The tree kill looks pretty bad in that photo, is that what the whole area looks like? It reminds me of a summer or two ago when I packed into the Eight Lakes basin around Mt. Jefferson that had been hit by a fire the previous year.
The beetle damage covers a vast area. I am not a good judge of square miles but I would guess it is in the hundreds if not thousand. I believe we could be in for one heck of a fire season as a lot of the dead trees are in the wilderness areas.
“They say” that 1,000 trees an hour are falling in the high country of Colorado. The healthy trees are falling over, too, because of losing the support of the others. Very sad, but in another fifty years or so, they’ll all be filled in by other trees.
