Fishing is not cruel, because 1) fish do not have a developed nervous system, and are therefore incapable of feeling any level of pain that would be deemed "cruel" and 2) fish are not very developed in terms of intelligence, i.e. they lack the cognitive ability to comprehend what is happening to them or care either way.

Hunting can be cruel if done a certain way, like fox hunting, or if it is for the wrong reasons, i.e. hunting for sport rather than food. It also depends on the kind of animal you are hunting - how intelligent they are, their pain tolerance and life expectancy etc. etc.

You know what would happen if your brought this up to your ancestors? They would blow your freaking head off.

But no, hunting or fishing is not cruel. Hunting is not cruel AS LONG as you do it for food, not for sport. Predator and prey is natural. Besides, why call it cruel when you are sitting at McDonalds eating a cheeseburger? The only people that have room to argue against this is vagans.

It's not cruel unless to hunter or fisherman deliberately makes it so. And generally I think that killing an animal relatively quickly in the wild is a lot more humane than slowly slaughtering an animal bred in captivity and kept as such for it's whole life. Shooting a deer in the head, for example, is a quicker, cleaner death than slitting the throat of a cow and leaving it strung upside-down to bleed out. I also think the weapons and tools we use to kill animals in modern times are more humane than past instruments. If I was an animal and got to choose how I wanted to die at the hands of humans, I would much rather be shot than poked a bunch of times with a spear until I can't run anymore, and then get my head bashed in with a club.

Hunting and fishing aren't cruel if you do it correctly if hunt something and then don't do anything with the meat it's wrong. When my dad gave me my first bb gun he said you kill it you eat, and he's right.