Cool - yeah you are about right on the rod. It'll handle most 9" stuff but not the solid rubber 9" that have a lot of pull to them in the water.

Hey, another one to check out is going to be the Okuma swimbait rod. Mark was demo-ing it when he got those fish in the pics below and I made a few casts with it. It's got muscle to it, and nice components. They're going to retail for $89 and that's the first rod I've seen in that price range that has that good of a feel to it, and can easily fish the big heavy baits. A lot of the so-called swimbait rods on the market are just worm and jig rods that are marked as being for swimbaits. This rod is made for swimbaits from the ground up because Mark is designing it and he knows what's up. It sure has taken the bigger mfgrs a long time to come around on the swimbait stuff.