I believe implicitly that the best way to handle a hooked trout, the one sooner or later adopted by most anglers who do much fly-fishing, is as follows: Having, as above noted, your reel underneath the rod with the handle to the right, maintain at all times, both when casting the flies and playing a fish, a loop of line of convenient length between the reel and the first guide of the rod. This loop of line is controlled by the left hand, allowing the line to run out through the guides or, when necessary, drawing it back. Use the reel only when the loop of line grows so long that, when you are wading the stream, there is danger of fouling the line. When casting from a boat or canoe there is little chance of fouling the line no matter what the length of the loop may be if you take pains to lay down the line evenly on the bottom boards.
Now when you hook a trout you do not, at this very critical point, have to pass the rod from the right to the left hand and, what is worse, turn the rod over so that the reel will be on top. On the contrary, you "stand pat," as it were, still keeping the rod in the right hand and, if the trout is a large one, yielding the line to him through the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, or, if the fish is a small one, gradually drawing in the line--and the trout--with the left hand without recourse to the reel. When stripping in the line, clip it to the handgrasp of the rod between the first and second fingers of the rod-hand.
If the trout is a fairly large one and is hooked in fast water it will often happen that his first run will exhaust the loop of free line. Then, when he stops running, pass the rod from the right to the left hand--you do not have to turn it over because your reel handle is placed to the right--and play him from the reel until he gives in a little, when you at once return the rod to the right hand and strip in line with the left.
Playing a trout in this manner one is master of the situation at every stage of the game from the strike to the landing net; and if, at any time, some unusual action of the fish renders the outcome more than ordinarily doubtful, your chances are many times better for getting out of the difficulty than if you depend upon the reel for the intake of your line; for instance, every experienced trout fisherman knows that often a trout will run out many feet of line from the reel and then incontinently about-face and run in toward the angler--one of the most difficult situations the fly-caster is ordinarily called upon to face.