I agree 4 foot leader with oolie, with conditions and currents as strong as they are now might be a little long. Advantage of the short leader is that the current cannot lift your bait as easily and spin it, renderring it largely useless. With less current, leader length is less of an issue. I've been using about a 20 inch leader, even then bait can spin...
Also 1son, shore fishing for sturgeon will naturally garner more smaller sturgeons, you will get lucky once in awhile and a hook a decent one, but typically expect smallish sturgeons. I'd reccomend lightening up your gear to suit these smaller fish. Spinning outfit even works great, you can cast far, and gives these usually smaller fish a much better fight. Spinning outfit from a boat though is highly UNrecommended.
I did say right now with water being in freshet, that you'll be casting onto shallow bench where sturgeon are less to frequent, while that's true, sturgeons do come up on the bench. Maybe they're feeding, maybe they're just getting out of the current, I don't know, but they are there. Infact today while fishing for nothing in particular, I got one (3 footer)on my spinning rod and dew worm fished on the bench. It put up a great fight, with my sturgeon outfit, it would have put up little to no fight. With the appropriately paired gear any sturgeon will put up more then an adequate fight.
Also 1son, if you're trying new areas you're sure have lots of snags, you could try using a railway tie tied on with mono as your weight. That way you don't have to worry about losing expensive and hard to break off lead weights. And fish an area of water you feel good about in all conditions and throughout the year. Familiarize yourself with the water, learn where the snags are, learn where the dropoff is and learn where the fish are going to tend to be given the conditions. It may take yearsto totally familiarize yourself with a specific area, but it will payoff in dividends taking guesswork out of equation. Where to fish isn't as important imo as how to fish in a given area.