In general, the boats dont provide gear. You're expected to show up with your own stuff. But, you can rent what you need from the marinas. And the boats do have gear aboard that is kinda there for people that show up with the wrong stuff or dont have enough of something. As for rods and reels, I took 6 setups but really only used two. 5-6 seems to be the norm for most people but I bet most of them rarely use more than the same few rods. And I could have gotten away with one by quickly rerigging between night and daytime. Sometimes, daytime fishing can have a lot of variations. Rods for casting, lighter jigging, etc. There's also the potential to do some fishing for yellowtail and other smaller fish which will usually require a smaller setup. If you had to, you could make it work with two rods. A "100lb setup"(night time jigging and sinker rig day or night) and a "60llb setup"(daytime jigging, flylining, sinker rig, possibly casting, yellowtail, etc). For whatever reason, the west coast guys always refer to the weight class rather than the style of fishing its being used for.
Good quality reels run about $600-$700 but can be picked up used/ like new on bdoutdoors classifieds in the $400-$500 range. If you dont mind the hassle, you can pretty much buy, use, and resell for what you paid. Point Loma sportfishing list their rentals on their website. Im told its all top notch gear that gets gone through after every return.
Rigging and terminal tackle are extremely important but really pretty simple. I could make you a very short list of high quality swivels, split rings, couple size hooks, and a couple leader coils and youd be good to go. As for artificials, a half dozen jigs for night time jigging. There's no sharks or other toothy critters relieving you of jigs. Theyre rigged really heavy so you dont lose many of them. During the daytime, you can mess with some lure options if you want but the live bait never runs out and is consistently more productive.
Knots are mostly simple. I use a uni for heavy mono, a palomar on flouro, and youd need to feel confident in a FG, PR, or other similar braid to leader knot. Good videos on youtube for all that.
Again, make use of the vast info found at bloodydecks. Read other peoples reports to try to get a broader idea of what to expect. Make use of the search function with good keywords.
After a 10 year hiatus, this is what I have learned after 3-3day trips this year. | Bloodydecks (bdoutdoors.com)Shoot me an email if youd like to talk details more.