Here’s a hatch chart of insects.
http://www.charlesmeck.com/hatchchart.html
You need to tie a catskill style, comparadun, parachute, cripple, emerger, wet, nymph or larva and pupa for each of these. Add a couple of thousand attractor patterns dry, nymph, wet and streamers and you’re half way there.
Okay you get the idea. Many of us carry thousands of flies in many hundreds of patterns. That’s not really necessary, but after years tying and fishing you will accumulate flies and learn to tie different patterns for different situations. When starting out I would take the approach to tie the basic attractor and generic patterns, and tie some hatch-matching patterns for the common hatches. A couple of generic nymphs like the HE & PT imitate many of the nymphs for each hatch when tied in different sizes and colors. Don’t worry about all the hatches, read to gain knowledge of the basic hatches first, and build on your knowledge and experience from there.
Here ya go, you will likely see these hatches where you fish: BWO, Hendrickson, Black Caddis, Grannom, March Brown, Tan, Brown and Green Caddis, Sulphers, Lt Cahill, Slate Drake, and Trico. Don’t forget about stoneflies - golden, black, brown, and sallies, and terrestrial patterns like the ant and beetle.
Read about these hatches and their behavior and hatch time, try to learn to ID them on and in the water, learn to tie flies to imitate them, and learn how to fish them.
Don’t go out right out and spend hundreds on books right now, although quality reference books are well worth their price. A good start to see what the insects look like is:
http://www.troutnut.com/hatches.
A place to start to learn to tie patterns is here:
http://www.charliesflyboxinc.com/flybox/index.cfm.
Good luck fool. (don’t worry guys, he’s my cousin and he really is a fool!)
