Crew Profile: Calvin Fuller

CALVIN FULLER
North 40 Ponderay Fly Shop Manager
Family, Fishing and Physics

I was born into a fishing family. My father loved to fish and would often leave for days at a time chasing trout with a fly rod. I was destined to become a fisherman myself. My first memories of fishing are on a small inlet off the Snake River fishing for panfish with a bobber and worm. He always told me to pick up my slack line. I started fly fishing when I was five years old on the Touchet River in Eastern Washington. Growing up, we would go on camping trips, and I would always bring my fishing stuff. I never lost interest in fishing and preferred fly fishing through my teenage years.

For my senior graduation gift my father took me fishing in Alaska at Alaska Sportsman's Lodge. It was an awesome gift that became the initiation into my fly fishing career. After fishing there for five days, the lodge owner Brian Kraft offered me a guiding position for the summer. I became an Alaskan Guide the next year while studying Physics at Western Washington University during the rest of the year.

After guiding for four years and steelhead fishing on the Skagit all winter and spring, I graduated and settled down. I moved to Sandpoint, ID where I married a local girl, Camille Lovell, had two boys, Landon and Beckett, and opened up my own fly shop, Sandpoint Outfitters.
After owning my business for six years, an opportunity arose with North 40 Fly Shop. A mutually beneficial agreement was reached and the rest is history (or present/future). Now I am running the fly shop and sporting goods department at North 40 in Ponderay, ID, and I am loving every minute of it.