That's just ignorant.
Depending on the circumstance.
Mind you, I primarily fish for table fare, and sometimes for bait for larger fish. (Small bluegill make good catfish bait, saugeye bait, etc., esp. in waters with bluegill but not containing more oily fish such as shad, in which case the oily fish make better bait.)
But, while fishing for a meal, it is very common to catch either fish too small to be worth cleaning for table fare (unless one is desperate or from a culture that eats small fish?), OR, that are needed in the waterbody to balance / improve the fishery, gobble up junk or invasive fish, etc., OR that have accumulated too many toxins. Then catch and release of fish in particular size ranges makes great sense.
A prime example is that smaller waterbodies in particular can easily get overpopulated with small, stunted bluegill and / or green sunfish, if too many of the larger piscivores (largemouth bass, catfish over a few pounds, etc.) have been harvested. If gizzard shad get loose in a lake or pond, then you can end up with virtually no bluegill over 6" long, but sometimes many of them.
As a general rule, water quality also plays a role: The lower it is, the more older, larger fish are likely to not taste good. Piscivores are almost certain to pick up mercury, and in most US water bodies we have a sort of background "haze" of mercury that floats here from Chinese coal burning power plants. (This is not a slam against coal powered plants, just ones lacking proper scrubbers, etc. One of the lowest mercury lakes I know of in the US is a 2000 acre cooling pond for a large coal burning power plant!)
There are natural sources of mercury in many lakes too. Agricultural runoff is a problem in many freshwater bodies, as well.
A common situation is that channel catfish in a pond may make good table fare up to 4-5 lbs., but larger fish should be released back to the pond. The larger catfish don't taste as good as smaller catfish, they will have accumulated more toxins, and, the pond needs them as predators. However, tho' I usually target those 3 pounders, larger channel cats will sometimes take a small bait. That can even happen with much larger catfish of most any species: It may not actively hunt a minnow / small piece of bluegill, worm, etc., but if it runs into one, it may decide to inhale it. The biggest fish by far, that I ever hooked, was just such a case. I lost the fish because I was fishing a pool in a stream, but couldn't keep the fish from running to current, where I knew "I didn't have a prayer" -- I was using only 20 lb. line. I don't know exactly how big that fish was, but it was far more powerful than the biggest fish I've ever landed: A 36" flathead catfish. Which latter, BTW, was hooked on a small piece of bluegill any 2-3 lb. channel cat could have ingested.
(Obviously, the fish didn't understand, but when I released that 36" flattie I said "Go eat some (jumping) carp, dude!")
Also of note, while channel catfish of all sizes are "opportunistic" feeders, as they get larger, they turn more to being piscivores. I am sometimes surprised that fisheries biologists do not modify the regs for them, to take advantage of that.
In the case of largemouth bass, very often "slot limits" are established to try to better control panfish and / or "junk" fish populations, as well as establish a better bass fishery. For example, at one of my favorite lakes / camping spots, harvest of largemouth bass is as follows:
Large or Smallmouth Bass: Protected Slot Length Limit with no possession of fish greater than or equal to 14 inches and less than 18 inches; 6 Fish Daily Harvest Limit with no more than 1 fish greater than or equal to 18 inches and 5 fish less than 14 inches
This is not "woke", it results in a better fishery.
As Kosh told Sheridan in Babylon 5: "LEARN."
If you wanted a good fight, you casted out a Mepps #3 bucktail spinner, and dragged it in as fast as you could wind the reel. When a 26 inch angry jack pickerel hit it breaking water at full speed, it would skim over the water fully exposed maybe a couple incheshigh about three or four feet and started thashi g on the way down. You'd better have something a littlebigger than a trout net to get him into the boat.
There was a lot if meat there, but even fileted the flesh had so many of those little Y-bones that it was no fun to eat.