To the plain sight of an alien, the act of catch-and-release (C&R) fishing would look more or less identical to the phenomenon whereby a house cat finds a prey animal like a mouse, but prefers to repeatedly pounce on it and catch it rather than killing it. Google search that phenomenon and you’ll find that people are perennially inquisitive as to why the cat would torture the animal rather than just kill it. People tend to perceive it as a sign of inexperience… an indication that a cat’s hunting instincts are undeveloped.
Some will say that the difference between that cat and C&R anglers is found in intention, and there’s certainly something to be said for that, but C&R fishing is still arguably “playing with food”, no matter how you prefer to justify it. And frankly, before sport anglers go too far in the direction of patting themselves on the back for not partaking in the “barbaric”, “unrefined” act of fishing for food, they would do well to remind themselves that they knowingly accept some irreducible measure of fish mortality purely for their sporting enjoyment. Hardly a pursuit admirable for its compassion when framed that way.
I say all of this, by the way, as a conscientious C&R angler myself: I harvest only a couple meals a year, easily 1% or less of what I catch. And if asked, I would indeed attribute that to the desire to keep the fishery strong and/or conserve wild fish, as the case may be. Those are real, meaningful principles that I wouldn’t venture to discount. But no matter how much I might try to validate my fishing habits with all manner of justifications and reasoning, I would be no better than half-blind if I couldn’t also acknowledge that when I’m out in the woods on a small stream, bow-n-arrow casting a dry-dropper for a wild brown, fighting it to my net as it struggles in vain to escape, and then letting it go…. I’m little different than that cat pouncing for fun on a struggling baby rabbit, just to watch it escape and go pounce on it again. If the fish could talk, it certainly wouldn’t call me a friend.