Ask MidCurrent: The Strip or Reel Predicament

Image by Brian Bradfield

Question: I keep losing nice fish because I can’t decide whether I should get them on the reel or just strip them in by hand. One morning last week I bungled a solid rainbow, and that left me in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Are there any rules of thumb for making this decision?

Answer: We’ve all been initiated into this club: Your dry drifts perfectly in the seam, just inches from that fallen cottonwood where you’ve been watching rings appear all morning. The fly vanishes in an explosive boil—your rod bends double, and suddenly you’re connected to what feels like a runaway freight train. Line sizzles through your fingers as the rainbow turns downstream, and in that crystalline moment before instinct takes over, you face the decision that haunts every serious fly fisher: do you trust your stripping hand, or is it time to let that disc drag earn its keep? Make the wrong choice and you might find yourself dejected as that animated line suddenly goes limp and lifeless. Or, worse yet, you watch your potential fish of the day disappear into the depths trailing tangled leader behind it.

The Basics of Line Management

The moment you set the hook, you’re faced with two choices: crank that gleaming reel hanging below your grip, or trust your fingers to maintain the delicate connection between you and your quarry. Each approach will serve you differently—think of them as distinct tools in your arsenal, each waiting for its perfect moment to shine.

Why Your Hands Often Know Best

Feel that direct connection when you’re stripping line? That’s your fingers reading the pulse of the fish, translating every head shake and tail thrust into information your brain processes faster than any mechanical system could manage. Your hands become living drag systems, infinitely adjustable, responding to each surge and slack with microsecond precision. There’s an intimacy to hand-stripping that no machined reel can replicate—you’re literally feeling your fish’s every decision through the line.

When Hand-Stripping Makes Sense

You’ll find yourself reaching for the strip retrieve most often when you’re working smaller water or dealing with fish under about sixteen inches. That frisky brown trout darting through the pocket water isn’t going to take you into your backing, and your hands will give you the split-second control you need to keep it out of those submerged branches. The same goes for smallies in the riffles—quick adjustments to line tension can mean the difference between solid hookup and a story about the one that got away.

Signs You Should Switch to the Reel

When line starts burning across your stripping finger like hot wire, that’s your cue. When your quarry heads for the next county and shows no signs of slowing down, or when what you thought was a decent rainbow turns out to have shoulders like a steelhead—that’s when you need mechanical advantage. Deep water fighters particularly demand the consistency of a quality drag system, and any time you feel your heart rate spike watching your backing knot approach the rod tip, you’ll be grateful for every dollar you spent on that sealed drag system.

The Transition Moment

Here’s where you separate yourself from the rookie ranks. Making the switch from strip to reel demands the fluid grace of a well-practiced dance step: maintaining steady pressure while gathering loose line and engaging the reel. Watch any veteran angler and you’ll see it—that smooth motion of reeling while feeding line onto the spool with the line hand, never allowing a moment of slack. One fumbled transition can turn your trophy shot into a long walk back to the truck.

The Case for Modern Reels

Your reel isn’t just expensive eye candy—it’s precision engineering designed to tip the odds in your favor. Today’s drag systems can deliver consistent pressure that systematically wears down fish while protecting those 6x tippets from sudden surges. When you hook into something that’s going to test your backing knot—be it a hot steelhead or a bass that’s headed for the next zip code—that drag mechanism becomes your best ally in the fight.

Reading the Water

Different waters demand different approaches. That brush-choked mountain stream screams for hand-stripping to keep fish from wrapping you around every submerged root wad. But when you’re out on those broad flats or working deep runs where fish have room to run and few obstacles to worry about, getting them on the reel fast becomes critical. This decision becomes even more crucial when salt’s involved—the wrong choice there can leave you with cut fingers or a long boat ride thinking about what went wrong.

Know Your Quarry

Each species writes its own rules. That little brookie in the mountain stream? Strip away. But when you’re swinging flies for winter steelhead or working the flats for bonefish, you want that fish on the reel before it realizes it’s hooked. Understanding how different species typically react after the strike helps you make those split-second decisions that define successful days on the water.

Advanced Techniques

The best anglers blend their approaches—starting with hand-stripping to control the initial chaos, then smoothly transitioning to the reel once they’ve established who’s in charge. Some develop hybrid techniques like palm-spooling, adding drag with their palm against the spool while reeling. These advanced moves take practice but can make all the difference when that fish of a lifetime decides to test your skills.

The Bottom Line

Choosing between reel and hand-stripping isn’t about following rigid rules—it’s about reading situations and responding with the right tool at the right moment. You’ll learn to recognize the subtle cues: the weight of the fish, the speed of its first run, the water you’re standing in, the space you have to maneuver. Success comes from developing the judgment to make the right call when it matters most.

Most importantly, you need to practice both techniques until they become second nature. The more comfortable you are switching between methods, the better equipped you’ll be when that trophy fish inhales your fly. Over time, the decision becomes less conscious choice and more pure instinct. And on those magical days when everything clicks, you’ll execute the perfect technique without ever remembering making the decision at all.