John: A lot has to do with size of the fish and the species. Stocked trout are just retrieved by stripping in the line. Northern pike you don't want to be holding the line when they decide to run. Largemouth bass you should get onto the reel as quickly as possible. Crappie I use one of those automatic reels that no one likes. They have such a paper thin mouth that I want to get as much line is as quickly as possible and then I hand strip in the rest of the way. Big trout I try to get on the reel as quickly as possible. Any small freshwater fish can be brought in by hand by stripping. Unless you are in a fast moving body of water and you have a lot of line floating all around you or dragging downstream. Or if you are in a kick boat or float tube,if you don't mind all that line on the stripping apron. But once it falls down around your feet, you have a problem. If you are going for salt water species and you have to use the two handed retrieve you should let the fish take up all the slack that you have just pulled in by hand and then get them on the reel as quickly as possible.
Then the old thread of which hand do you use comes up again. And again. And again. I'm not an instigator am I? Any one want to start on that thread again? Alan Di Somma Phoenix,Az. http://www.azod.com http://www.azflycasters.org/ "Deep Thoughts" Is French kissing in France just called kissing? ----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, November 13, 2002 10:56 PM Subject: [VFB] Landing a fish - stripping vs. cranking > I've got a question to ask the list. Since I normally fish water which
