Dropcast's base is 5 min down road from me. He does well on the LoB trips - because he is fishing away from home - which is fairly hammered by other charters day trips. 

200lb mono leader is common. Because lots of those fish have sharp teeth and live in gnarly country. I had a Sargossa 1800, but that got knackered and I now use the 20,000s. Good reels capable of most what you need. But usually you will be putting max drag on most stuff. Firstly to pull them out of the rough stuff, and then there are the ......sharks. Lots of the good spots also hold sharks and it is often a race to see who gets the fish.

Good luck, should be a good trip. I should be there at same time.

Regards

Alan

We generally fish on the sheltered side of the island and have an offshore wind blowing us away from the reef.  That way if we do hook up to something reasonable it does not take very long before we are blown out to several hundred metres of depth.  

We have caught a few reasonable GTs and Neopolitan Wrasse on the lighter gear there over the years.  We are usually targeting smaller Mu which is a good quality eating fish.

Make sure you change out the rings and hooks for something sturdier.

The same reel will work on either rod.

I have some 200lb trace as well as 130lb trace over in Aitutaki but don't think I have ever used the 200lb.  I think if you end up with jonah on the end of the lure and it takes you into the reef you will probably get dusted regardless of whether it is 200 or 130lb.

Looking at a couple of old videos I noticed another thing I take over is some casting gloves - good to save the hands from the braid when casting all day, I also take over a good pair of pliers for the split rings.

I have one 16000 reel spooled with 100lb braid and a spare spool 10000 size also spooled with 100lb braid.  I also have another two 16000 spools spooled with 50lb braid which I use for trolling and live baiting around Aitutaki.  We have access to a small stabicraft boat over there when we go over for our annual trip.

I have not bothered squashing barbs on the hooks but the charter skipper may have some preferences around what he wants happening on his vessel.

This fish was on a stickbait

This one was on softbait gear

The beauty of stick baits is that you can let the rest of the crew do the hard work raising the fish with the noisy harder to work poppers and you can then sneak a dirty little stick bait in behind their lures and catch their fish.

I've done a lot of popping for kings back in the day, my fitness and grip is pretty good as I train 3x week grappling BJJ etc and although not used to hours and hours of casting have caught a few game fish/swords this year.  but great idea to go and get the casthing back up to speed

Farmer - I was wondering about trace as some other I have spoken to are using 200lb and that seems so huge .

I have also been told to bring spare braid incase of being spooled, its hard to believe 300m with 22kg of max drag would be in danger??

Those Heru lures look good.

I have also heard of squashing barbs?  Safety etc.

keep the advice coming

Spooled with Jigstar PE8