The hike to the fishing hole felt a little different than normal, as we traveled over mud fields and past ancient relics to a river that only appears for a few weeks each year.

We passed a pair of size 10 shoes, tractor tires, antique beer cans and even the ruins of a former bridge in the bottom of Lookout Point Reservoir, which is transformed from a wide lake into a narrow stream each year in late fall and early winter.

The reservoir’s muddy bottom only attempted to swallow us once — I sank to my knees near at a small stream crossing. But it was an otherwise simple hike from Highway 58 to the “new river,” or at least a new segment, of the Middle Fork Willamette southeast of Eugene.

“It’s basically a moonscape, and a very different type of environment,” said Greg Taylor, a fish biologis

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