Learning in challenging conditions may prove beneficial in the future. When you take your fishing to a river there will be all sorts of water conditions, some relatively calm, slow moving, fast currents even back eddy's to your right or left. You still have to be aware of where you intend to place the line as you prepare for the next cast. You'll get what I mean first time you fish a freestone river with varying currents.
Another thing you're going to encounter will be when you start casting / fishing on the side of the river and you start to feel that you have things figured out. Then you find that you must, or you want to wade across and approach from the opposite side of the river. When you do this everything will change, things will be as if reflected in a mirror. Your cast that you were using just a few minutes ago, the one you felt comfortable with? Everything is different now. The flow of the river is no longer coming from your right, it is coming from your left. This is where and when you may want to slow down, take a moment to think about the change in dynamics and figure out what changes you need to make in order to get back in that groove.
I'm not an instructor but I've started many people on their way in both single hand and Spey casting. I'll provide online advice the same as I would if we were together on the water. I suggest that you focus on making what I call 'fishable casts' meaning 40 foot or so. If you find that you are easily reaching out farther than that try not to become a 'Boomer' meaning someone always reaching for the opposite bank. Wanting to cast really far seems to be endemic with fly casters, they naturally want to cast longer lines. Learning while keeping the casts within a very manageable range can be helpful in several ways. First off a shorter cast requires less energy to be input by the caster. Less energy can mean the difference between just messing up a cast and actually stabbing yourself or your waders with a hook point. Keeping the casts within a control zone also allows you to train yourself in many of the basic steps of good controlled casting. It also may help you to focus on fishing the water that is nearer and to be more thorough with your approach to fishing subsurface flies.
Whether at the beach or on a river being in control is important, always, and I mean always, know exactly where that fly is before you commit to the final forward cast stroke. You will quickly recognize the factuality in that advice because that fly will leave from wherever it is and then take a course following the rod tip. Mistakes result in line wrapped around the rod tip or the fly striking the rod or you. I don't know if you ever skied but this is sorta like skiing in that people who think they are ready for the double black diamond runs on day 1 or 2 often get injured. With fishing it isn't really injury that can be the big threat, it is frustration and disappointment.
Before I hit 'Post Reply' I'll leave you with one last bit, when you get away from the noise of the surf, when you are on a river in a peaceful place your hearing is going to pick up sounds you may not notice standing in the surf. I'm talking about sounds made by your rod and line. If you can detect a very noticeable swish sound while casting, I'm talking about a very noticeable sound of that graphite rod slicing air .............. I believe this to be a sure sign of inherent problem with the casters use of force in their casts. Too much speed & force is the source of the loud swishing sound. This is most often the result of the timing. The timing is off to such an extent that you are not able to utilize the weight of the anchored line to load the rod but you have discovered that simply applying more speed to the forward stroke will overcome issues that should be more closely addressed. Good Spey casting whether with a Skagit head or a full Spey fly line should be fairly absent of swishing sounds. Other noises like slurping = stuck anchor or poofing noises = no anchor. These sounds can serve to train you into good casting style. I've been on rivers where there were other people fishing, I'm not always sequestered away in the more remote areas. While at those places I've seen people fishing far enough away from me that I could actually see the cast then a millisecond later hear the swish and slurp as I saw the cast collapse in front of the angler. Some can pull it off and send casts way out there but the sound indicates lost energy so try to cast quietly.
Need more, I'm always around until the ice goes out
