About Us

Fly Revolution was born out of the idea to develop a homegrown fly-fishing apparel brand that produces great quality products featuring cool designs at reasonable, locally-relevant prices. It has since grown into a collaboration between Kyle Ovens, Gavin Schneider, artist Jacques Coetzer and Afrika Joe t-shirts.  

All our Fly Revolution designs are inspired by Africa, its fish and the spectacular fisheries in which we target them. Fishing t-shirts are dime-a-dozen these days and we aim to set ourselves apart with quality product and bespoke art designs. 

Aside from t-shirts, tech sun shirts and caps we will stoke one-off runs of bespoke hand-tied fly patterns from top SA fly tiers. Currently on site we have some limited edition ironmans tied by Leroy Botha as well as fly packs crafted by Philip Meyer. Going forward we will offer only one or two tyers’ flies at a time and when they’re sold out, then they’re gone. 

“We’re just two average fly-fishy peeps who love all that is fly-fishing.”

Gavin and Kyle met through Kyle’s business partner said he knew a guy that was keen to throw and fly. A fly-fishy blind date some 16 years ago has developed a solid friendship, countless fishing sessions and now a business.

KYLE OVENS

Kyle grew up in Pretoria and was a keen ‘pap gooier’ (freshwater bait-fisherman) as a kid. Somewhere in his early teenage years, a school mate invited him to join him on a weekend away to Dullstroom. With precious little instruction and after frantically whipping water with a sinking line and Walker’s Killer, he managed to catch his first stillwater trout. It was the birth of his love for fly-fishing and fly-tying was born. That was more than 30-years ago and he’s since fished all over Southern Africa, the US and New Zealand. Once he hitchhiked from Pretoria to Dar Es Salaam with fly rod in hand (and has great memories of enticing Malawi’s Mulanje and Zomba Trout). Today he’s based in the Garden Route where he runs a hospitality recruitment firm and throws Alphlexo crabs at Spotted Grunter, when he’s not at home with the lovely Clare, who accepts his addiction.

“Idea of Fly Revolution came about some months in lockdown as I was contemplating ways of diversifying and developing a business within my main passion of fly fishing,” says Kyle. “With the price tag of the imported premium brand apparel available in SA not getting lower anytime soon, I felt there was a gap for quality, design-driven t-shirts celebrating African fly-fishing at a reasonable price.”

GAVIN SCHNEIDER 

Gavin Schneider is a Cape Town-based producer with over three decades of film industry experience, much of that owning his own company. Gavin’s passion for fly-fishing started as a way for him to clear his head from the crazy, fast-paced days of production and slow down. On his first visit to Rhodes on a guided trip, it was love at first sight, and he proceeded to buy a farmhouse on a renowned stretch of river and converted it into what is today Welgemoed Lodge. Aside from his beloved Bokpsruit, Gavin has fished the British chalk streams, chased grayling, trout and pike  in Scandinavia and tangled with tigerfish in Tanzania. For Gavin – much like Kyle – the evolution into an apparel business in the fly-fishing industry was the natural next step in his passion.