Paddlers, fishermen and others gather along the Blackstone to mark the annual statewide celebration of Rhode Island's rivers.

01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, June 18, 2006

BY THOMAS J. MORGAN
Journal Staff Writer

The group celebrating Rhode Island Rivers Day at the Central Falls Landing yesterday could not have had a more attentive guest of honor. Swollen by recent rains, the Blackstone River pulsed past with an unending swish and plunged headlong over its falls 100 yards downstream to form a field of frothing white as it raced toward the ocean.

"We border the hardest-working river in the world," said Cumberland Mayor David S. Iwuc, whose community is one of six in Rhode Island threaded by the river. While the historic riverway once supported one of the region's densest complexes of textile mills, today it is used "nearly 100 percent" for recreation, Iwuc told the 50 or so who picked the site at the Cumberland town line as a place to mark the day.

Iwuc himself has used the river for recreation -- he once jumped in for a swim during a river cleanup project.

Farther downriver, at another cascading waterfall, a crowd braved -- or, depending on preferences, basked in -- the hot sun at a daylong songfest known as RiverSing, at Slater Mill. They had their choice of entertainment on eight stages, and vendors selling everything from ceramics to jewelry to stuffed animals.

The day of events was sponsored by a coalition of the Blackstone River Watershed Council, the Friends of the Blackstone River, and the John H. Chafee Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor Commission.

Standing on half of a wooden platform at the river's edge, Iwuc observed that the landing "has gotten bumped and bruised around with the last couple of rainstorms." But it will be fixed, he promised to applause. The other half of the platform was barricaded by sawhorses to keep people away from its warped deck and sagging rails.

The wear and tear was obvious at the other end of the structure. The swift current had carried debris at a good clip to a junction between a floating dock and a ladder giving access to boats. A tree trunk had jammed the spot forming a floating dam that caught further flotsam. The floating dock itself hung at an angle in the current, but was tied securely to pilings.

Kevin Klyberg, a park ranger with the Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor, said he grew up on the banks of the Blackstone Canal and delighted in introducing schoolchildren to the beauty of the river.

The river began as a source of food and then transportation for Native Americans, Klyberg said. Then for two centuries "it took a beating as a sewer system for the mills."

He said a constant cleanup campaign has brought back several species of fish and birds. Even a deer was seen "just the other day" not far from where the celebration was taking place, he said. "People no longer treat it as a sewer," he said.

Over in a shaded corner, four men sat at picnic tables tying trout flies, members of the United Fly Tyers of Rhode Island, one of the sponsoring organizations.

John McCall, of West Greenwich, said the group often gives demonstrations, devoting half its time to freshwater flies, the other to saltwater.

Bluefish and striped bass are currently the likely willing consumers of saltwater flies, McCall said. Later in the summer bonita and false albacore move in offshore. After that come the bluefin tuna.

Bluefin tuna on a fly rod?

"Once they get above 30 pounds it's usually not doable on a fly rod," he said dryly.

As the members worked away on their specialized vises with a rainbow of colored threads and a variety of hair and other fuzzy armaments, McCall picked up a piece of deerhide complete with deer hair.

Whitetail deer, he said, are native to Rhode Island. He had created a handful of bucktail streamer flies, which he said he could knock out in about five minutes and which imitate a sand eel, a small baitfish in saltwater.

Fly-tyer Mike Maddelona, of Hope, said the Blackstone now is home to a growing variety of fish such as bass, crappie, sunfish and pickerel, in addition to state-stocked brown trout.

"The river has come a long way since the state started stocking 10 years ago," he said.

Are the fish good eating?

The tyers professed to be "catch and release" fishermen.

"I would think long and hard about eating fish from this river," McCall added.