March can be a time when the minds of many turn to fish.
For some, it’s a matter of Friday meals. For others, it’s a countdown to the April 2 opening of trout season.
For those who find themselves among the latter, Kory Van Tassel is ready to help.
Less than three weeks ago, Van Tassel opened The Fly Stop in Washington Centre, just a couple of blocks from the banks of the Neshannock Creek, which is generally regarded as one of Pennsylvania’s top fly-fishing streams.
It’s the second shop by that name that Van Tassel owns. The other is in San Diego.
“I learned to fish in the Neshannock Creek,” the Mohawk High graduate said. “I started fishing when I was 13, then worked at The (Neshannock Creek) Fly Shop in Volant when I was 16. I learned a lot there. I worked there for like 10 years, through college, then started doing my own thing.
“I’m 40 now, started working in a fly shop when I was 16, started selling flies on the side when I was 22, then started The Fly Stop as we know it when I was 25.”
After about 10 years on the West Coast, Van Tassel moved back to Lawrence County in 2021, getting closer to family and the fishing scene he grew up with. Still, he explains, when it comes to fly fishing, don’t sell San Diego short.
“Some people think of fly fishing, they think of (the movie) ‘A River Runs Through It,’ ” he said. “New Castle, Neshannock – most people think like Bozeman, Montana (where the movie was filmed). Fly fishing is more than just trout. We like to trout fish a lot, but it’s way more than just trout.”
That includes everything from muskie and carp to largemouth and smallmouth bass. In California — where his business also leads both freshwater and offshore fishing excursions — the catch of the day can include tuna, dorado and even mako sharks.
“Mako sharks is one of the big things we do there,” Van Tassel said. “It’s just bigger gear, but we fish everything from little bay bass to several-hundred-pound mako sharks, all on a fly rod. You name it, we’ll fish for it.”
At The Fly Stop, he offers a variety of items for the avid angler.
“Our big niche — what we’re known for, what The Fly Stop started out as — is flies,” Van Tassel said. “We manufacture all of our own flies. We have thousands of patterns in a ton of different sizes. That’s why ‘The Fly Stop’ — flies are our thing.”
Nonetheless, the business also offers a room full of materials for tying one’s own flies, as well as nets, rods, reels, vest, waders and other miscellaneous gear.
Working with Van Tassel at The Fly Stop is Lucas Smith. The two met originally at a clearwater guide school, and Smith first worked for Van Tassel at the latter’s Cranberry Township warehouse when Van Tassel was selling flies online.
They parted for a while, “but we’ve kind of come across each other two or three times in the last few years,” Smith said, “and he reached out in January about joining him in this adventure, and I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely.’ ”
Together, Smith and Van Tassel plan to offer more than just retail sales from their downtown New Castle location.
“We’re looking to do smallmouth trips, wade and float, on the Shenango, and we’re going to try to do some wade-and-float trips on the Neshannock,” said Smith, who is from Cranberry Township but who, like Van Tassel, learned to fish on the Neshannock Creek. “We’ll also do casting clinics — beginner, intermediate, advanced. We’ll probably end up doing fly-tying courses here at night, too.”
A longer-term goal, Smith said, would be to team with the city of New Castle to do an additional stocking in the downtown area of the Neshannock.
“If we can’t get help that way, then we may fund it on our own,” he said, seeing the move as having potential to bring more people into town.
“Even during the pandemic, this scene — fly fishing, outdoors — really picked up,” he said. “This is an area that definitely didn’t falter during the pandemic. It only increased. People got more interested because they couldn’t go to their bars or their normal spots. They had to go outdoors more.”
(The Fly Stop is located in Washington Centre, 26 N. Mill St., New Castle, in the walk-through section of the facility. For more information, call (724) 698-7681; email info@theflystop.com; or visit www.theflystop.com.)
d_irwin@ncnewsonline.com
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