RIVER SPORTS

White-water flows on Arkansas benefit paddlers

The upper Arkansas River is off to an excellent rafting and kayaking season, because of late spring precipitation, an outfitters group says.

Snowpack readings May 1 were 98 percent of average, and water-year totals were almost 100 percent of average.

The Arkansas River Outfitters Association predicts water levels will be good for paddlers this year along the Arkansas Headwaters Recreation Area.

Information on recreation and current river conditions: 719--539-7289, or www.parks.state.co.us.

FISHING

Kansan bags potential world-record paddlefish

A Kansas man fishing for carp with a dough bait has caught a candidate for the paddlefish world record in a flood-control reservoir near Atchison.

Clinton Boldridge, of Riley, landed the 144-pound paddlefish May 5. The paddlefish was 75 inches long from the tip of its bill to the tip of its tail.

Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks officials confirmed the fish was not snagged. Because the reservoir has no river flow and never had paddlefish, they speculated it probably had been put in the lake by someone who caught it elsewhere.

Paddlefish are plankton eaters. The current world record is a 142-pound, 8-ounce paddlefish, from the Missouri River in Montana.

Two Montana rivers designated off-limits

Drought forced closure of portions of two popular southwestern Montana rivers to fishing Saturday, the day the state's general fishing season started. State fisheries officials ordered 19 miles of the upper Big Hole River and 57 miles of the Red Rock River closed because of low flows, which stress fish.

Flows on the upper Big Hole recently fell below 6 cubic feet per second; they typically are 300 cfs in May. The upper Big Hole is home to Montana's last native population of river-dwelling Arctic grayling.

ENVIRONMENT

Sharp-tailed grouse returning to the plains

Biologists with the Colorado Division of Wildlife are working with their counterparts in Wyoming and Nebraska to reintroduce plains sharp- tailed grouse to private land south of the Pawnee National Grasslands.

Thirty of the birds have been trapped in Wyoming and Nebraska and released on Conservation Reserve Program farmlands in Weld and Morgan counties.

Only a few plains sharp-tailed grouse remain in Colorado, in isolated pockets of Douglas County, where they are threatened by suburban sprawl south of Denver.