Fishery agencies increasingly manage for wild trout. Such management emphasizes habitat protection, tailors angling regulations to productive capacities of waters, and isolates hatchery programs from wild trout populations. In quality stream environments, locally adapted wild trout survive and reproduce better than hatchery-produced trout because the hatchery environment selects for anatomical, physiological, and behavioral traits that are maladaptive when those fish are released. Hatchery trout can increase mortality of wild trout, and hatchery operations can degrade waters that harbor wild fish. Hatchery programs also often lead people to believe that causes of fishery decline have been averted. Thus, hatchery programs are justified only in carefully defined circumstances; for example, stocking usually should be viewed as a short-term option to restore extirpated populations or to create populations in new waters or where reproductive habitat is lacking. The energies of agencies will be more effective if focused to manage in broad ecological contexts rather than merely adjusting hatchery programs.