On the fly: new Maggie Valley shop debuts fly fishing festival
Shannon and Kristin Young opened Maggie Valley Fly Shop in October 2022. Holly Kays photo
Shannon Young has no trouble identifying the exact moment he fell in love with fly fishing.
He was out on the West Fork of the Pigeon River, casting for trout, when a state of flow overtook him. A spiritual sense of the place arrived, supplanting any awareness of physical actions he was taking to cast his line and pull it back in.
“I was in the river and the birds are doing their thing, the trout are rising, and I was like, okay, now I really understand the other side of fly fishing, from a spiritual aspect,” he said. “That’s what just grabbed ahold of me. And I said, ‘Okay, this is what I want to do for the rest of my life.’”
That was two-and-a-half years ago, just about six months after Shannon, a former competitive bass angler, tried fly fishing for the first time. Now, he and his wife Kristin, also an angler, own Haywood County’s newest fly shop and are organizing a fly fishing festival that’s coming to the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds June 24-25.
“We are pretty gung-ho, myself and my husband,” Kristin said. “We love to put in hard work. We want to desperately give back to this community, and so that's important to us. So working these long hours and opening the shop and doing the festival, that's just who we are. We have to be busy, and busy doing things that we love, and planning things that we love.”
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Kristin Young casts her line on a fly fishing trip. Donated photo
Maggie Valley Fly Shop opened on Oct. 10, 2022, in the log cabin on Soco Road that previously housed Crafted in Carolina. It’s the fruit of an unexpected dream for the couple, who previously lived in St. Petersburg, Florida. They both had high-paying corporate jobs there that kept them busy running in separate directions. Kristin, who is an Air Force veteran, worked as a broker between banks and merchants, while Shannon, a native of northern Georgia, ran a landscaping company. They came north as a temporary escape from the pandemic.
“When we got here, we fell in love with it,” Kristin said. “We didn’t want to be in the city anymore.”
They found a cabin to rent, and Shannon begin running a fishing guide service. He did that for two years, long enough to see an opportunity.
“You started figuring out there’s a huge, huge amount of people that come in to fly fish in this area,” Kristin said. “So once he did that for two years, he started writing a business plan.”
For anglers, by anglers
It’s 2 p.m. on a Wednesday — not exactly prime time for retail shopping — but a constant stream of customers flows through the log cabin fly shop. Shannon helps them try on gear, answers questions about river conditions and rings up purchases. Upstairs, Kristin turns off her phone to secure some uninterrupted time to speak with The Smoky Mountain News.
“I usually come in here about 5:30 in the morning,” Shannon said. “I get a pot of coffee going and do a little bit of marketing, and then people actually start coming in at 6 — and as you can see, it’s steady today. Weekends are really busy.”
The shop is located along Soco Road in Maggie Valley. Holly Kays photo
The fly shop is open seven days a week, 6 a.m. to 4 p.m. They’re long hours, Kristin said, but hours that are intentionally aligned with the couple’s goal — to create a fly fishing shop for fly fishermen. The shop is on the way to countless favorite fishing spots, so the early opening time makes the Maggie Valley Fly Shop an easy stopover for last-minute purchases en route to the river. The shop offers guided fishing and float trips, and those clients arrive at 6 a.m. to organize before setting off for the day’s adventure.
“We designed the shop for the fly fishermen,” Kristin said. “So being fly fishermen, we figured we’re not in it to put out everything that’s expensive. We wanted to bring in cost-effective prices that people are willing to pay.”
The shop carries a wide variety of brands. It’s one of only two shops in North Carolina to carry the “top of the line” English brand Hardy, Kristin said, with the other shop being in Boone. The shop carries Temple Fork Outfitters, Cortland and various other brands, including several created by Shannon and Kristin. Shannon has a line of shirts branded with the name of the shop, and Kristin has a couple lines of women’s wear, Girl on the Fly and Dry Fly Girl.
For Kristin, carrying a robust inventory of fly gear intended for women was a priority in developing the shop. As a female angler, she said, too often she’d walk into a fly shop and find only men’s gear, with nothing in her size.
Kristin places a priority on ensuring the shop offers gear and clothing for female anglers, too. Holly Kays photo
“There are women who love to fly fish all the time, and I want to make sure that when they walk in this door, they have a whole room dedicated to their needs,” she said.
Maggie Valley Fly Shop has such a room. It’s filled with women’s wading boots and waders specifically designed to accommodate female curves, as well as shirts and leggings made to fit well, last long and imbue a sense of style. The UV-proof leggings patterned like the scales of various fish species are a customer favorite.
The shop also has a main room containing rods, flies, men’s gear and various other types of clothing and equipment, as well as a side room dedicated to fly tying. It contains a desk outfitted with tying equipment and shelves of supplies.
Setting up the shop was “a wild ride,” Kristin said, but “well worth it.”
The shop offers an entire room dedicated to fly tying. Holly Kays photo
Launching a festival
At the same time Shannon and Kristin were wading through their first year as fly shop owners, they were working on another big project as well. Despite being only three years into fly fishing — the saltwater fishing they did in Florida is a whole different sport — they’re hooked on the natural beauty and sense of peace it involves.
They want others to experience that too. That’s why they decided to take on planning for a new festival, which will debut at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds this weekend.
“We want to bring awareness of the sport, the love of it, the nature behind it, and we want to share that with everyone,” Kristin said.
The Maggie Valley Fly Fishing Festival will be held 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, June 24, and Sunday, June 25, offering a variety of demonstrations, activities and live music. Demonstrations will be open throughout the event, with fly fishing vendors set up and an open pond for fly casting. Four expert fly tyers — Patricia Pezza, Bob Nanney, Rex Wilson and John Brandow — will demonstrate the craft as the event unfolds.
At 10 a.m. both days, Josh Miller, a fly fishing coach and member of Fly Fishing Team USA, will give a 45-minute talk, and attendees will have the chance to learn more about fly fishing and stream life from a long list of organizations planning to be present. These include the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Project Healing Water, North Carolina Veterans Outdoor, Haywood County Parks and Recreation, Casting Carolinas, Casting for Hope, Fly Fishing Museum of the Southern Appalachians, Haywood Waterways Association and many more.
“We have geared this also to make sure that we get them out, so they can do the things they need to do to outreach locally here,” Kristin said of the groups planning to attend.
There will be a kids trout derby and a series of raffle drawings for fly fishing gear. Both days, the Pigeon River Messengers will perform noon to 2 p.m., The Well Drinkers 3-4:30 p.m. and Songs From the Road Band 5-7 p.m. Food trucks will be on site.
Shannon Young holds up a freshly caught rainbow trout. Donated photo
This week’s festival is an inaugural event, but Shannon and Kristin plan for it to be an annual one. They’ve already secured permission to hold it next year. Hopefully, Kristin said, it will give even more people the chance to experience the feeling she gets while out on the water.
“There’s nothing more beautiful,” she said, “than watching the fish rise or flash.”
Check out the festival
The inaugural Maggie Valley Fly Fishing Festival will be 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Saturday, June 24, through Sunday, June 25, at the Maggie Valley Festival Grounds.
A variety of demonstrations, activities and live music will greet attendees throughout the day. The cost is $10 per person, with children 12 and under free.
For more information, visit maggievalleyflyfishingfestival.com.
