I am a little different, I use a 7'mh that is a cut down trolling rod, its a little faster action than your average crankbait rod but not by much, my reasoning for this is the strikes are violent, its one of the few techniques I use braid with and I want something to give on the strike. For line I use 30-50lb Power Pro braid, the only reason I use braid is so I can snap the jig through weeds cleanly, this draws strikes and insures my jig stays weed free even through the heaviest cover.
As far as where I fish them I am generally fishing them shallow through the sparse to heavy weed cover, I generally look for isolated stands of coontail or pads and swim and pop my jig directly through them, occasionally letting it fall after I rip it out of the weeds. Swim jigs can also be an excellent choice for deep weedline work, slow rolling them along the edges of deep weedlines in the summer can be deadly. For shallow work I go with a 1/4-5/16 oz original for the deeper stuff it is a flip and swim in 1/2 and above. As far as hooksets go (for the light wire) I generally reel down on the fish, feel its weight and just sweep the rod back, the fish generally hook themselves and you don't need a huge hookset, it is a light wire hook and you risk the chance on blowing it out during the hookset. For the flip and swims, swing away it is a heavy hook, it can take the abuse...lol
As far as jigs, I obviously am biased but we took along time developing our swim jigs getting the look and feel right before bringing them out, the original swim jig swims true is hand built, tough as nails and is everything I wanted in a swim jig. The Flip and Swim is a heavy hook model that can pull double duty as a flipping jig and is still a great option for swimming around real heavy cover and out deep since it is available to 1oz. That being said there is alot of very good swim jig makers out there, Brovarney and lethal weapon are the original cheesehead style jig makers, Seibert and others build good heavy hook models. i generally shy away from mass produced brands on just about everything and don't have a comment on any of the "big" companies stuff.
As far as trailers go, I generally use a Paca Chunk in the summer, in the spring I use a single tail grub, mainly action plastics 4 or 5 inch mag grub, they have the perfect tail for not wrapping around the hook and fouling, and I also use swim bait type trailers like a cut down Berkely grass pig, 4" LFT live magic shad (thanks RW) or other hollow body offerings.
