Well.. I'm sure everyone here will have different tips for you, but I recall one of the mistakes I used to make. When I first started fishing, I failed to cover enough water. I would find a likely-looking spot and stay there - changing flies, adjusting the depth. Now, I try to systematically cover all the likely lies and then move on. I hardly ever make more than three or four casts from the same place unless I am certain there is a fish.

As for fighting and landing fish, it's just something that will come with time. It sounds like maybe you just didn't get a good hook set on that guy, but you never really know - sometimes fish just come off the hook. For smaller fish, I tend to just strip them in immediately, unhook them them in the water and see them on their merry way. For medium and larger-sized fish, I usually let them run on the reel, then hold the rod in my upstream hand and scoop them up out of the water from behind, unhook, and release. Sometimes with longer rods, this is tough. How and when you land a fish is one of the things in fishing that is difficult to teach or explain - it depends on the tippet strength, the size of the fish, the location of the hook and, of course, the terrain of the stream. One thing to always keep in mind, though, is that no matter how you do it, it is traumatic for the fish, and you should land, unhook and release him in as little time as possible.