i must add another report to my experience...(this is back in the late 70's (i was eight) when it was legal to use a winch and huge shark hooks for sturgeon fishing, and you could keep them too) .
The same week i caught my first kokanee (fish), one of the old duffers at the Gray Creek General store (hiway 3a, south of crawford bay), was phoning everyone to come down to the boat ramp behind the store. One of the locals had been out all night, fishing 1500 yards of 500 LB test stainless braided line, with a barbed shark hook about the size of a two liter bottle of cola, a 10LB downrigger ball and a dead rotten chicken for bait. he had rowed out about 1000 yards out and dropped the weight/hook and bait into the water and when it hit the bottom(that lake is freaky deep) he attached a couple of 5 gallon pails with lids for floats. he then rowed back and spliced his line into the winch line on his Dodge. about 0530 hours, the floats started moving and then disapeared. he fired up the truck and roared off the boat ramp and up the hill to set the hook. he then had gotten out and felled a tree with the chainsaw, to block the wheels. he turned on the winch (the first WARN winch made!!) and started hauling the line in. took awhile but he had caught the biggest white sturgeon in Kootenay lake. when we all got down to the dock, there it was. after weighing and measuring (1187 LBS, 21' long, 3' wide at the belly), the sturgeon was dragged back into the lake with a boat and released. it slowly swam off and then sped away.
i'm trying to get ahold of some old neighbours in the kootenays to get a picture.