Ii'm still in process of learning my spey. I do more practice casting then casting to fish. I read your post about Goodings telling you it was a drift rod, not a fly rod basicaly. They were full of BS. I bought mine mainly for purpse of hitting flywater that was unreachable to a standard flyrod. I fish the Hoh alot and some oof my prime flywater was overstrewn with overhanging branches behind me. So I used my driftgear mostly and th occasional pocket that as open I'd throw my bug rod. I'll say it's nice to have a starndard flyrod an a spey. Since you alreay have the 8wt single hander might as well keep it and then get a spey eventualy. Ii'm still learning to cast, but am having a blast using it. Can't waiit until I'm ready to actually seriouusly fish the spey. I feel if you're gonna learrn it, practice but don't fish. Yyou'l hhelp yourself by concenrating on the casting. But you'l have watee thtas way to smal for a spey. No use doing aspey cast 20' feet when you're rod iis already 14-15'. Might as well use a singlehander and do cuple false casts.

Ddepending on what brand rods you want to usse, you can get inntoa spey outfit faairly cheap. Cabela's sells an outfit for about every situation for around $350 for rod/reel/and line. They're made of St Croiix blanks and caast superbly.