Anybody here catch oversize

I am looking for peoples experiences battling oversize sturgeon from a yak.  Specifically I'm looking for the time expected to catch and release the fish.  I have caught piles of them over the years and don't target them anymore, but the novelty of catching one from my kayak has me intrigued.  Out of the PB I have confidence I can release one within 30 min.  A battle to much longer than that and I probably wouldn't bother cause it's not worth killing a spawner just for a picture.

Don't know of anyone. It would be a lost cause as far as I can see in that you'd kill the fish. If we could keep 'em I'm pretty sure it'd be a different story.

Z

This picture is of me battling what I believed to be an oversized.



The story is as follows.  I hooked up this fish on a ghost/mud shrimp combo.  It immediately took off and we released anchor ASAP as it was taking line fast.  As we were fishing a shallow area on SF Bay the fish had no where to go but out and away.  If took us 2 miles from where we hooked up and pretty much had its way with me the whole time.  It essentially drug us around for 45 minutes.  That's 400 pounds of people on a Cobra Triple it was dragging around.  When the end game neared we got right over this fish in about 10-12 feet of water.  I remember thinking, "this is it", as it was close.  Next thing I know the sinker and hooks come flying out of the water.  The fish was only 4-5 feet under the yak, but we never saw it in the muddy water.

That rod is a Seeker Black Steel 8' 270H rated 15-30#.  I had 20# PP spectra on it and have a really good feel for this rod as I use it often for swimbaiting albacore.  I like to work a fish hard and was forcing the issue as best I could.  You can see from the bend in this rod that I was putting some good pressure on the fish.  Still, I never really felt in control of the fish until the end game.

One thing to keep in mind is that in a kayak you can NOT exert the same amount of pressure that you can on a big boat.  When exerting force, you are not able to take advantage of the fact that the boat has a large mass and doesn't get dragged to the fish, like it does on a kayak.  If doesn't take much force to move a kayak in the water, even a big yak with 2 large people on it.  Without a lot of force, you can't tire the fish out as fast.

So I think you're looking at a fish at least as long as the 45 minutes were were on this fish, perhaps more if you're fishing deeper water.  The kayak does have the advantage that you can pull the kayak to the fish, but if the fish decides to run, you can't put the big pressure on it like you can on a big boat.

-Allen

Thanks PolePole that's what I was looking for.  To bad you got so close without getting to see the fish.  45 minutes is about as long as I would like to stress a fish in warm July Columbia river water (probably not as big a deal to a fish in the bay).  If I were to try it sounds like a mother ship would be a good idea in case I need to hand the pole off to get the fish released.  It definitly sounds doable but just not sure it's worth risking the fish.