Flymen Fishing Company and renowned fly designer Blane Chocklett have teamed up to commercially produce a full range of modern Game Changer flies.
The first two fly designs of the collection, the Finesse Changer and the Polar Changer, are now available for limited pre-order through Flymen Fishing Co. for fly anglers and select fly fishing dealers.
“Until now these next generation Game Changers have not been readily available to the market except from a few private tyers. I am excited that fellow anglers will now have the opportunity to fish and enjoy success with my flies” Said Chocklett.
Game Changer flies are a distinct style of highly articulated streamer patterns designed and popularized by Blane Chocklett, one of the fly fishing industry’s most forward-thinking and innovative fly designers. The original Game Changer fly has evolved to become a fly design style, not a specific fly pattern, and today Blane ties a variety of Game Changers using different materials to target different species in various fisheries. These flies in their different iterations has caught many different species of fish all over the world from trout to roosterfish.
Sometimes described as ‘swimbaits for fly fishermen,’ these lightweight, multi-sectioned flies swim and catch fish like no other fly on the market. Game Changer flies are created using a combination of the Fish-Skull® Articulated Fish-Spine system and other innovative tying materials to achieve a never-before-possible level of natural swimming movement and realism. “Something that’s very important to me is to have the flies that I design will fish exactly the way I created them, and my signature Changer fly collection I’m releasing with Flymen are tied to my exact specifications. There’s going to be a lot more to come, but we started with two different styles that can be fished prominently throughout the water column and can be fished for a wide variety of fresh and saltwater species.”
Martin Bawden, founder of Flymen Fishing Co., said “From the beginning, Flymen Fishing Company has been built on innovative next-generation fly tying materials and fly patterns based on those materials. We first teamed up with Blane several years ago when we worked together to bring the Game Changer fly concept to life by developing the Fish-Skull Articulated Fish-Spine shank system. “These amazing flies are no longer something that can only be admired from a distance. Our vision is to offer our customers a full family of Game Changer flies designed by Blane Chocklett in the months and years ahead. We are currently producing the Finesse Changer and Polar Changer with plans to introduce other fly variations such as the Feather Changer, Mega Changer, Bucktail Changer, and others in the future.”
Blane has similar feelings about Flymen Fishing Co. being a natural pairing. “The sky’s the limit because Martin, he doesn’t want to do the mundane thing and just do the same thing over and over again. He sees the value in pushing this sport forward and sees where I want to go. “I feel like we’re a good team because we both have that goal of wanting to push the envelope. We want to see where this takes us and I personally, and I’m sure Martin feels the same, I’ve lost a mentor in Lefty and see the mark that he left on the industry and this has been a life project for me. And now I want to leave something. Larry Dahlberg told me a couple years ago, ‘You don’t stand on people’s coattails, you stand on the shoulders of those who came before you. That’s important because we’re building on the things from Lefty, Clouser, Popovics, Dahlberg, and all these other people I’m not mentioning now. They’ve all built that platform for us to stand on and it’s up to us to start pushing it forward and creating new things and not just creating the same old thing and calling it something else.”
If you’d like to get your hands on the new Game Changer flies, you should act fast. They are available for limited pre-order. Game Changer flies are in high demand and they tend to sell out quickly. These are specialized, custom-tied flies that are technically difficult and time consuming to tie to the correct specifications. As a result, the Flymen factory sometimes cannot produce them fast enough and if not in stock can be pre-ordered on a first-in first-out basis. Fly fishing dealers can place pre-season requests to carry this line of flies on the Flymen Fishing Co. website.
You can learn more about Blane Chocklett in his recent interview with Flymen Fishing Co.