So let me know if you want a reference that way.

But honestly, the most effective thing would be to just try to make friends with someone who can be a mentor to you. You can learn a lot via reading and YouTube (in that way it’s much much easier to learn than it was when I was a kid) but there’s no substitute for being with someone who can tell you what you’re doing wrong and help you adjust to doing it right in real time.

I’ve worked with people who have spent months trying to improve their cast beyond 30 feet and in literally less that 5 minutes I see the mistake they’re making, show them the adjustment, and they double their range.
There are sooooo many things to learn that it’s just a lot easier to get it from someone in person.

So find a mentor/fishing buddy. Until then, time with a guide can be very worth it, but make sure to get someone who is actually a good teacher and let him know that you really want him to teach you how to fish. Most guides are automatically geared toward helping you maximize your fish catching while you’re with them. These aren’t the same thing.

To start with:

-Learn where fish live. Which waters, but more importantly, where in any particular piece of water.

-Learn how to cast to those areas without scaring the fish first. Trout behave very differently from bass. So how to approach stealthily and how to actually execute the cast, which is totally different than using a bait caster or spinning rod obviously. This takes practice you can do in your yard, and it can be fun by itself.

-Learn how to get the fly right in front of those fish in a natural way. Usually this means drifting naturally with the current, not resisting the flow or being dragged in an unnatural direction or pace. It requires good casting and especially “mending” your line: moving and adjusting it throughout the drift to help your fly drift naturally. Using the correct amount of weight if fishing subsurface. Learning how to defect when the fly is hit and immediately setting the hook (needs to be QUICK. Trout don’t hold onto a fly like a bass does a senko). These things are sooo much more important than using exactly the right fly.

-Learning what the fish are eating (entomology) is important too. Learn what there eating and what flies look like them.

-Learn how these things vary on different waters. Even after decades of experience and having taught many many people, I’ll still hire a guide sometimes when I go to a new/different water that I’m going to spend a lot of time fishing (when I don’t have a buddy introducing me to it). just because there are new things to learn unique to each fishery, and I’ll learn enough in one day with a guide to make the rest of my time there much more effective rather than spending days figuring it all out myself.

Again, if you want that I can recommend some folks.