Going to purchase a setup for mainly soft swimbaits and start tinkering in that department of fishing. What gear ratio reel do many of you use, or any other specific tips on selecting the right reel?

With soft baits, you mainly fish them slow, or bottom bounce them. If your an antsy person, a 5:2 would be ideal, however, you can use any ratio if you have the patience, so it's a matter of which reel you want. I use a Chronarch, 5:2, and I have a Curado 301, 6:3. Be careful of the smaller reels, as a good cast can almost spool them, so you want to sorta match the rod, and reel to the weight of the baits you will be throwing.

For instance, I can spool my 101 Chronarch casting my 8" Lunker Punker, not so much with jointed hard baits, soft baits like the 8" Hudd is a bit ify on that reel, so I use the 301 for those. The 6" baits can be tossed with a 100, or 200 sized reel.

well i usually keep the gear ratio at around 5.x

mainly because i want to be able to keep the swimbait going nice n slow, and keeping a realistic movement with the swimait

which i feel the lower powered 5.x gear ration help you achieve

Going to purchase a setup for mainly soft swimbaits and start tinkering in that department of fishing. What gear ratio reel do many of you use, or any other specific tips on selecting the right reel?

I use a Shimano Citica 200DSV , 6.2:1 gear ratio and it does a great job.