OK I think I have a better understanding of the short comings of hatchery programs.

So it sounds like 1 issue hatcheries have is they cannot produce quality fish.

Even if you take a wild pair of fish and use them to stock the pens. Its more then the genetics of the pair that's a factor in healthy fish. In a hatchery environment fish are given ideal conditions to survive, even the weaker of the offspring. The same offspring that would of been culled naturally because they didn't have "the right stuff" to make it in the wild.

So in essence all a hatchery is doing is giving fish that shouldn't have been able to make it naturally a better chance of surviving to adulthood when in nature they would have been weeded out at earlier stages in life.

The fish that come from the hatchery are better adapted to survival in hatcheries and not necessarily in nature, even though the parents were of wild origin.

So even though hatcheries may be able to create more returning fish it doesn't necessarily mean they are as strong and healthy as what would of occurred in nature because they didn't go through the "school of hard knocks"

So a hatchery is basically more of a quantity factor then a quality factor.
At least this is what I am assuming and we all know what happens when we assume.