Garden City ? The discovery of a destructive foreign snail at a Colorado fish farm is expected to hurt trout fishing in southwestern Kansas for at least the next few weeks.

Late last month, state officials stopped stocking ponds and lakes in southwestern Kansas with trout after a New Zealand mud snail was found at Cline Trout Farms in Boulder, Colo. The farm provides fish for the area.

The mud snails have become a nuisance after establishing themselves in seven Western states and three national parks. Measuring less than 5 millimeters in length, the snails can reproduce rapidly, stripping entire river systems of algae and killing off the native snails.

Cline Farms is trying to find a way to get rid of the snails, which were found in a stream running alongside the farm.

In the meantime, the Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks is checking for the snails in several Kansas ponds that have received trout from the farm in the past.

Owner Ken Cline said his company had other fish farms in Colorado and Nebraska. If those farms are determined to be clean of the mud snail, Cline said, he could begin restocking Kansas ponds from them.

Trout season in Kansas runs from Oct. 15 to April 15, and state officials said anglers bought 7,348 trout stamps in Kansas last year.