I lived ten years on the Gulf.

If you are talking truly surf, the three prong sinkers are a must. It reduces weight shift by the prongs digging into the sand. Keep in mind though, if your buddies know the area, they'll probably not have you on true surf but in a cove or inlet.

After a bad experience with a Tiger Shark, I for one stopped using heavy test line in salt water. If I can't catch it on 20lb test and working a good drag, I don't want it. Its more fun to have to fight the big ones anyway. Just learn to set your drag right or react to it as necessary.

Don't tie your line to your reel. Too big a line test, a tied off reel, and too big a fish, you can kiss that combo goodbye. The fish will take it right out of your hands. That's why salt water reels are so big. It buys you time to wear them down and turn their nose.

Just keep in mind, a big sport now is catching sharks with freshwater ultralights.

I really don't know what its like where you are going. I will tell you this, we never fished for reds or flounder on the surf, but always on the waterway side, and inlets. Flounder was simply shrimp on the bottom, nothing special, and reds we used life shrimp and slappers to draw the fish. That's on shore. Off shore, hell drop the shrimp down in front of their nose. Anyway, on the gulf, neither reds or flounder like the surf. Its too violent for them. With no inlets, we'd opt for piers to get out of the surf as much as possible.

Surf fishing, mostly we fished for shark. On the gulf its mainly hardhead cats in the surf, so we'd rig big hooks with bait too large for small fish to swallow, use a surf sinker. then set our bait, usually using a clicker while drinking beer. The idea being the hardheds would gather around our bait, not be able to eat it, and a shark come along eat hardheads and out bait both. It made for some fun nights. Otherwise too small a bait, it was one right after the other but mostly trash fish.

What I'm saying here, you need to call your buddies. Odds are they are probably going to take you to a pier, inlet, jetty, or waterway not real surf. Though I have tons of salt water gear, heck, I've fished inlets etc. just fine with fresh water gear. Fresh water gear is only really lame in the surf.

Tj