The best way I can think of, at least in Bryce, would be to use a terrain, rather than a flat plane with a water texture.  You could easily blend your mist to obscure the far edges of the "water" terrain so that you wouldn't have to alter your composition at all. This example uses two identical terrains, one for the waves, and the other, which has been "clipped" in the terrain editor and assigned to a frothy mat, for the crests. Very nice pic BTW.