Valhalla1,

I know what you mean about practicing with what you use, but grass and gravel and parking lots are devastating to fishing lines. Grass, depending on the variety, will make thousands of minor cuts in your line. Parking lots and gravel will rough up the surface of a fly line and destroy it in no time.
The destruction of the line is why I maintain a number of Parking Lot or Grass fly lines for the purpose of practice and when helping out a new fly fisher at a club function.

In the long run it really does not matter that much that you are practicing on a different line. The main thing is you are getting your timing down and that is critical. Timing is going to change every time you go fishing, changes caused by wind direction, weight of the fly, distance you are casting, the amount of back cast room you have, a number of outside influences.

Often a person can end up fishing with different lines, on different rods all in the same day. I almost always have three rods rigged up when I fish out of a drift boat: One rod for nymphing, one rod for streamers and one rod for dry flies. Each rod has a different action from medium to fast and each rod has a different type of line on it from double taper to weight forward to a shooting head type nymphing line. It is very important for the fly fisher to be able to quickly adjust to different rods and lines and fishing conditions.

So, save your good lines for the water. Clean and condition the line every time you go out and they will last for years. Use old lines or cheap lines for practicing.

By the way, you are right when saying that the best time to practice is on the water, meaning while fishing, but we can nott always do that.

Larry ---sagefisher---