Fairly early on in your tying career, purchase a good quality grizzly hackle. When I started out I was tying ugly, chunky dries and it was fairly discouraging because I was using crappy hackle feathers and no matter how much skill I developed, my dries looked bad/disproportionate. I finally ponied up a few bucks and got a nice Whiting half cape and the flies really started turning out a lot nicer. Grizzly is one of the more universal colors out there so I'd say start there. I use grizz in my Stimulators, ants, beetles, adams, hoppers, humpies etc etc so if you are going to have 1 'good one' I'd suggest grizzly.
And get a good quality ceramic bobbin, and a good pair of scissors right off the get go as well.
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