I'm just a beginer my self. A local Orvis shop suggested a great book , when I went to get some supplies to get started this year. The book is THE BENCHSIDE INTRODUCTION TO FLY TYING by Ted Leeson & Jim Schollmeyer. This book has alot of patterns and step by step instruction. It also is cool because it is split in two sections so you can look at the step by step and if you have a question about how to do something it gives you a page number that has the info on it. So if I'm tying a fly and I get to the part where I need to Palmer Hackle and I forgot or don't know how, I just flip the bottom half of the book to 156B or whatever and it gives me a step by step ref. It's nice because you can see both how to and still view where your at in tying the fly not fliping back and forth. The book cost $45.