Thumper,
I'll tell you why I have a distaste for hatchery brats: They don't fight well. They're like catching bass when you're fishing for steelhead. The natives are so much bigger, stronger, more aggressive, jump more, jump higher, run more.....etc. When fishing a river like the Clackamas or Deschutes that supports nates and brats, I can usually tell within 5 seconds if I've got a wild or hatchery fish on. Maybe 10% of the time I'm wrong. The first wild winter Oregon coast steelhead I ever landed jumped 9 times! The first 5 or 6 jumps were probably 6 feet out of the water. How many of you have caught a winter brat like that? How many have caught a summer brat like that? Out of the >100 winter and summer brats I've caught, I've had 1 fish jump more than 3 or 4 times (an early summer hen that jumped 6 times). I've lost count of how many really hot wild fish I've caught (not to brag, just to make a point). I have to assume that many people participating in these wild vs. hatchery threads have not caught any/many fresh wild steelhead because they don't know the magnitude of this difference. Wild steelhead are like a different species. For fishermen interested in sport instead of fillets, wild fish are way superior! I enjoy steelhead fillets as much as anyone...I'm having them tonight as a matter of fact, but for those who fish more for sport than for food, there is absolutely no comparison.