RE: First time goose hunter, help please
Haydel makes a pretty good Canadian Honker that's really inexpensive. Check it out.
As far as decoys, lighter the better in my opinion. I tend to keep my spreads small since the geese don't seem to decoy well to the larger groups. At least where I hunt. Lots of pressure from the Canadian boarder to North Texas! I use a few decoy shells (dozen or so) mixed amoung a few dozen texas rags.
Seems to work ok but I'm sure others here are much better versed on how to properly set up on geese.