brother grumpily insisted on using his trout spinning rod. Within the first few minutes he hooked a salmon that took out line so fast it fully stripped the plastic gears inside his reel then promptly snapped the line. A few min later my dad (w proper rented salmon gear) landed a 39 lb king salmon.

So rent gear if your sons don’t have it already. Especially the fly rod. A standard 5 weight would get destroyed.