On walleye tackle?
That puny “bottom-sucker” didn’t pull / tow a 14-foot Lund for a mile. The group used the motor(s) to ^follow^ it as it ran. It got tired out and was subsequently landed.
Yup. Its a legitimate fish fighting strategy.
Its what drag is for. To keep pressure on a fish while letting it run and preventing the line from breaking.
Yes, that is a small Sturgeon by just about any standard. When you can see them from 150+ feet above the water near the outflow of a Dam in South Dakota, you know they can get huge!
By my estimation, the Sturgeon I have seen at Dam sites were at least 10 feet long, if not bigger on average.
They can get as big as 20 feet long and ~1800 pounds!
“The official [Minnesota] state record sturgeon, caught on the Kettle River in 1994, weighed 94 pounds, 4 ounces. It was 70 inches long and had a girth of 26 1/2 inches.”
Bigger sturgeon have been caught in Minnesota, but not under the rules.
There are sturgeon in the northwest US that are twice that big, but I’m not sure they’re the exact same species.