In "The Fish" by Elizabeth Bishop, is the narrator sympathetic to the fish from the start?

The narrator
is fishing; this means she is either fishing for sport or for food. In either case, she is not
necessarily sympathetic to this or any other fish: if fishing for sport, she is willing to put
the fish through the pain of catch-and-release for her own pleasure; if for food, then she is
willing to kill and eat the fish for her own survival. In either case, sympathy for the fish is
unnecessary at best and detrimental at worst; too much sympathy and the narrator will starve or
have little fun. However, the sight of the other hooks stuck in the fish's jaw allow the
narrator a moment of intense introspection; the fish has survived and survived, only to die at
her hands?

I stared and stared
and victory filled
up
the little rented boat,
from the pool of bilge
where oil had
spread a rainbow
around the rusted engine
to the bailer rusted
orange,
the sun-cracked thwarts,
the oarlocks on their strings,
the
gunnelsuntil everything
was rainbow, rainbow, rainbow!
And I let the fish
go.
(Bishop, "," poets.org)

That she
let the fish go is evidence that she felt sympathy for it at the end. Before that, she had only
her own outer examination to go on; the fish is encrusted with parasites, and its skin is thin
and sloughing off from age. Its eyes cannot understand her, but move in response to her
movement; she, however, can understand the fish, a thing of only instinct and feeling, moving in
response to stimulation. The fish has survived this long, she reasons,
so who is she to kill it now? Sympathy for the fish comes from this
realization, but may have been spurred by an innate sympathy for any prey animal subject to a
predator such as herself.