Paintballer, I'm no expert but one of the things that helped me most is picking up a couple of "beginner" books and tying every fly in them:
- Charlie Craven's "Basic Fly Tying"
- Ted Leeson and Jim Schollmeyer's "Benchside Introduction to Fly Tying"
- Peter Gathercole's "Fly Tying for Beginners"
- Skip Morris' "Fly Tying Made Clear and Simple"
Pheasant tail nymph, copper john, woolly buggers (in all colors and sizes), elk hair caddis, e/c caddis, ants, comparadun, griffith's gnat, just to name a few. Hope this helps ;-)
John