North 40 Fly Shop Origins: AskNorth40

North 40 Fly Shop: In The Beginning

Some of our Great Falls friends might remember when we first started carrying a little bit of fly fishing stuff. I was in high school, Paul Considine, who is now our buyer worked in the store part time as well. I can’t remember who took the phone call, but somehow, Dad and I got in touch with the daughter of the previous owner of Shadow Cast Outfitters, which was the fly shop in Great Falls, Montana prior to Boyd Wolverton’s Fly Shop.

Anyhow, she had a basement loaded with inventory she didn’t know what she was going to do with, and asked if we could consider buying it. Although I loved fly fishing at the time, and didn’t realize it then, I was a beginner in business and fishing. I talked Dad in to letting us purchase the inventory from the basement, and he let us know we had better sell it.  Paul was on board, and at the time Paul’s older brother, Rory, was a big help moving that first inventory. We sold it all.

Had I known better what I was selling, we probably made some pretty great deals, but we made money on the inventory. We got about 20 feet of peg board to put the inventory on and we started what we called Big R Fly Shop. The first sales representative to step foot in our "fly shop" was Brooks Montgomery and although he has some fun memories of that first attempt, he helped get us our first real fly fishing brands. Brooks even stood in the fly shop and helped us sell during sales, which was great because we were learning and he helped show us the ropes during that time...

Our First "Real" Fly Shop

When the Great Falls store moved to the building that it is currently at, the company had begun to support the fly shop effort. We built a small wood structure in the back of the store designed by a local artist named Gerald Hinton.

One day, I was working and recognized one of the kids that came in the fly shop. I used to ski at Showdown maybe three days a week in high school with a kid named Corned. He'd also become a fisherman since then, and we immediately started fishing together--every night we were driving to the Missouri. Cornfed quickly became a part time employee and remained one until he received his pharmacist degree from Missoula.

When we first started, we didn’t have art on the walls, or a shop Labrador, or PBR behind the counter, or many of the other things that we all love about fly shops. What we did have to work with was inventory, and we work to offer the best information we possibly can so that people can enjoy fishing like we do.

When Erik and I were first working on the inventory, we were tying flies every night, sometimes I would come downstairs at three to four in the morning and Erik would have stacks of prince nymphs laying on the tying table next to empty red bull cans, and his bobbin was moving so slow (but it was still moving) around the next nymph hook.

So, fly tying became one of the things we decided we would try to make a statement on in our fly shop, and it is one of the things we still really try to be the best at.

Thanks To The People That Helped Build North 40 Fly Shop

In short, quite a few great friends helped us build the fly fishing business, some work for us still and some fish with us still, but they have all helped develop this thing we referred to as a Farm Store Fly Shop.

So, we have to say thanks to people like Kris (KK), Keaten, Erik, Paul C, Rory, D. Bise, Calvin, Paul A, Justin, Fred, Stephan, Greg, Brodie, Bloch, Denver, Johnny E, Rob G, Alfonso, Savannah, Jake, Gretchen, Tom, Tanner, our management teams, and probably a whole bunch more that I am forgetting. More importantly, we have all created a lot of great friendships from the customers that have come in, gone fishing with us, traveled to fish with us, and who have supported us.

I could go on forever about all that this process has given us and taught us but the point I really want to make here is that as North 40 Fly Shop, we are going to work really hard to amplify what we’ve put in place.

We are going to try really hard to develop better resources, a better fly tying selection, really understand how to create more fun for our customers, and teach new people what it’s all about... Thank you to all who have supported us thus far, and we are really looking forward to the future.