He is 12 weeks old he knows sit and we almost have stay down pat. i was thinking of getting a bumper to throw for him. I cant tell if he is water shy yet he wont jump in the pool when i throw in toys but idk if he is too young. He does love getting wet though. Basically what i want to know when should i start training for ducks and other birds and how do i go about doing it?

Never too early to start fetching. We started my first lab (Bear) on balls when we brought him home. He was a fetching machine! Labs are clumsy and mischievous puppies until they are 2 or so. Bear was a puppy at heart until he died at 15. To be a good hunting dog that listens, they need a ton of attention. As all of the working dogs, they are smart and need things to occupy them. When we would hunt I would have to throw a ball for him to keep him entertained when the birds weren't flying. He kept a tennis ball with him like a security blanket, but I suggest you don't let him have a tennis ball. Find something without the felt. It wears their teeth down. I have a rubber bird for my female. She isn't as gung ho as Bear was but she is still a great fetcher.
I also suggest getting some hearing protection for your dog. When Bear was older he was deaf as could be. You could walk up behind him and start petting him before he realized you were there. I had taught him hand signals for direction, but I had to whistle to get his attention. When he couldn't hear me whistle anymore, it was very difficult to hunt with him. He was still a great fetcher, and was very active. I just couldn't help him find the bird.
Don't give up on training. They need to be refreshed through their entire life.

ETA: I forgot to add how we trained them both.
My dad and I both worked on Bear. He owned a Roustabout company at the time and I was welding for him. I took Bear with me everywhere. We started by throwing balls, sticks, rags, gloves, pretty much whatever we had to throw, we would throw, all of the time. I mean any chance we had, throw something for him.  After he got used to fetching and saw it as fun, we backed off the fetching as much, and started making him do things for it, ie sit, stay, etc. I started using a starter pistol about the same time. At first he didn't like it, but finally got used to it and eventually would get angry at me if I wasn't shooting when we were hunting (hence throwing the ball during a hunt) I know that the dog should be still in the blind with you but sometimes he couldn't. Anyway, the next hurdle was getting him used to birds. He hated feathers at first. I couldn't get him to not bite the birds when they were still alive. Of course then he would get feathers and drop the bird to spit out the feathers. That took a lot of work with him. My dad had the idea of water balloons. He finally became a soft mouth dog by making him carry water balloons around. The female I have now is much better at that. She isn't as high strung. With her I would tie dove wings to her rubber bird and have her fetch it. She already loved the bird so the feathers weren't even a distraction.

try walking out into the water with the dog.

Coax it to deeper and deeper water until they start paddling on their own.  You can even carry them out there and hold onto their collar while leading them around you in a circle.  They will figure it out quickly enough.

Bring the dog out into the woods and tie it up to a tree.  Walk about 30yds away, shoot a shotgun, and watch what the dog does.

I've done the above for two dogs, both swim well and aren't gun-shy.

The current one doesn't like the dove feathers, so Dove hunting with her is pretty much out.
Dove's are a crap shoot with gun dogs from everything I have read and heard, so....

I think the book I read on hunting dogs was "Water Dog Book" by Wolters.

It gave me what I needed to know.

But truth be told, my dog taught me how to teach her, no differently than my kids have shown me what they respond to the best.

I think the main thing that worked with both of my dogs is that they knew I was the source of their adventure.  I was the one who got them out of the house and into the woods, on the water, and into the fields.

They WANT to be where I am and they learned to read me no differently than I learned to read them.

No shock collars used over here...

It's fun.  Time consuming if you want them to be like robots.  But rewarding as hell.

I got a couple of Lab mix pupps at the same time.  I took 'em both upland bird hunting.  They learned OJT.  

Formal training is the fastest and surest route to hunting dog success.  I was dam lucky.