Was at a Lodge in Costa Rica that raises trout in ponds. You can catch one for dinner or C&R, which I did. The fish were 15-25" long and very pretty. Nice fins, nice color. The jumped quite a bit on a flyrod. While I preferred the wild redbands in the river, these were about as pretty as you could want. Raising fish in dirt ponds and modest numbers gets you really nice looking fish.

Crowding them gets lots of fin erosion. At our trap, we saw some hatchery winter steelhead (scale confirmed) that showed only one or two broken rays in the dorsal. Pretty sure they came from a dirt pond and not a concrete raceway.

Like so many things in resource management, we know how to do quality. Just takes leadership and money.