The rumor mill is alive and thriving.

This time - buttressed by cross-eyed reading of old Internet documents - some purveyors of myths have been hyperventilating over the Division of Wildlife's intent to wipe out every fish in Rifle Gap Reservoir, beloved northern pike included.

The sky also is falling.

There is no such plan.

Neither did the DOW ever haze elk with cherry bombs thrown from aircraft just before the rifle seasons, to disperse herds and foil hunters.

Veteran pilot Dave Younkin, now retired from the DOW, defused that old saw in this column years ago: "Anybody lights a firecracker in my airplane, I'll show him the door," he said.

Then there's the one, circulating in e-mails, which accuses the agency of having an anti-hunting, anti-fishing agenda.

Duh. The DOW owes its existence to hunting and sales of fishing licenses.

The Rifle Gap rumor at least had origins in an actual document, which might be misinterpreted by someone with a shoulder chip and short attention span.

About a year ago, Western Slope fisheries biologists were discussing options for managing reservoirs that flow into the Colorado and Yampa rivers. The aim was to prevent non-native predators, like northern pike and smallmouth bass, from escaping and eating federally endangered, native fish.

Either Colorado does the job or the feds will - probably starting by snatching away federal aid grants (from fishing equipment sales taxes), which benefit the entire state.

As is customary in scientific discussions, the Colorado biologists listed all options - from doing nothing to poisoning Rifle Gap's fishery and starting over without top-of-the-line predators.

The extreme idea of wiping out Rifle Gap's admirable warm- water fishery never was a proposal. It lasted about a millisecond in bureaucratic time, a year ago, then sank into the electronic archives.

"The issue never even got past the regional level," said statewide fisheries chief Greg Gerlich. "If it had, we never would have moved forward on that without public involvement."

Someone unearthed the study document from deep within the division's Web site recently and passed it on as gospel proposed by the division.

Gerlich said the rumor went out in letters to the Wildlife Commission, to the media and to Gov. Bill Ritter, "when, in fact, that issue had been killed early on."

In reality, the DOW is considering installing a fish screen at Rifle Gap and other Western Slope reservoirs. Pike, smallmouth bass, perch and other exotics will be invited to stay.

"A screening system will enable us to provide warm-water fisheries without having the non-native escapement issues into those systems that are already being stressed by environmental factors," Gerlich said.

Preventing non-native fish from escaping into rivers has become an onerous responsibility for Western states.

Oregon and Washington, for example, are struggling with smallmouth bass migrating up rivers.

Like it or not, state fish managers have to accommodate federal recovery plans for natives such as razorback suckers, humpback and bonytail chubs and the Colorado Pikeminnow (the fish formerly known as squawfish).

That mission makes it difficult to manage for warm-water species nature didn't want here. But the wildlife division is pulling it off, on behalf of Colorado anglers.

Creative folk with time on their hands are welcome to submit a juicier rumor.

Meanwhile, as Gilda Radner's oft-mistaken classic Saturday Night Live character Emily Litella would say: "Never mind."