I have seen several people mention their hips… but for context, you can use your hip as a pivot point and the pole as lever to make adjustments to your direction of travel. I use this all the time (primarily my right hip).
This also means I have to move my pocket knife to my left front pocket to avoid the “ticks” that the pole makes when contacting the knife.
It takes a bit of time on the platform- but you will get it pretty soon.
I would recommend a large sallowish creek right after low tide vs a mud flat. Crashing into oyster bars can get your confidence tanked and you are more susceptible to wind. A wide creek (3-4 times wider than your skiff is long) will give you ample opportunity to practice poling and not have to worry about being blown about as much.
I prefer to pole down current- but that is so I can cast to fish and not have my angler line them- but stopping can be tricky in swift current. If in soft mud, I jam the pole deep and hold on to slow the movement. on hard bottom, you have to move your pole forward more.
I do enjoy poling into the current as well- but find the fish harder to fool unless the angler can land the fly without lining them too badly.
When you get to an area you want to fish, set up so you have the best light. Best to pole down light, ie sun behind you. Then pick wind or tide to deal with. Personally I prefer poling against the wind for better control of the boat and ease of stopping the boat quietly to allow fisherman to make the cast and strip the fly. You’ll find that it’s a good bit of work keeping the boat going slow enough to actively fly fish. This is way less of an issue for you conventional junkies.
Next, you want the direction you choose to have the fish coming towards you. You can almost never pole after fish to get close enough. They feel the boat and with 1 flick of the tail are adding boat lengths of distance between.
For actually poling, get the bow pointed in the direction you want to go first, then work on getting the boat going in that direction. Start with short pushes with quick resets. As you get moving in the direction you want to, then start making longer pushes.
Not sure if mentioned above, but SLOW THE ■■■■ DOWN! You are not meant to be a human trolling motor. Let the guy on the pointy end of the boat have a minute to work the fly/lure.
Agree with going slow and easy. Watching guides I’ve fished, the ones who are very good, slow down and pick apart an area, hitting all the likely places a fish would be. On a recent trip I asked “Is it worse to leave a spot too early or too late”, the answer was a definitive “too early”.
I rarely make a move more than once or twice a trip, usually pole a shoreline as far as I can and only move if I have to because I could not pole any further on that area or conditions such as wind direction or water clarity or depth change too much.
Once I’m in the area I want to pole, short 6”-12” pushes is generally all that’s needed. Especially if you have any sort of drift either from wind or tide.
Only time I’m using several feet of pole is when I’m trying to cover ground.
With the caveate that our tides in Louisiana aren’t very strong, what direction I pole is first dictated by the sun, gotta keep it behind you when possible. Often that means poling into the wind or current or both, poling against both on a firm bottom is still manageable, poling against both on a soft bottom sucks. In the winter the sun is in the southern sky and the prevailing winds out of the north so I spend most of the winter poling into the wind.
After the sun, my next consideration is to be on a bank protected from the wind when possible so the water won’t be muddy, Ease of poling is pretty far down in the equation when figuring out how I set up or what direction I go.
As much as I of course prefer to fish/pole a wind protected side of a mangrove at times I find more fish on the wind side. Depends on a number of factors one of which is the wind pushes more water onto those wind sides. This is true especially when tides are close to slack low. I do have plenty of success on wind protected sides as well.