Reel rigging questions for Imersion Esclapez Champion du Monde

Was wondering if anyone could give me a quick study on reel mounting and rigging? I've got a 90cm Champion du Monde with double bands and 130cm shaft, and an unmounted standard Imersion reel. My experience is all with California rockfish and a pneumatic, but I'm going to the FL Keys for a week soon and want to try this band gun, diving free and with tanks. I'm guessing the biggest fish this gun would ever see is maybe 50# - we've got yellowtail and white sea bass here, and I'd love to give our albacore a shot if I can get up the nerve to get in the water out there. It's rigged right now with mono and one of those swivels with a spiral on one side onto which a tensioning rubber/cord loop is threaded which goes through the muzzle. I'd like to mount the reel, and I've got the grip off. Here's what I think I've figured out to do:

1- Remove some of the neoprene coating so the reel base can mount just forward of the handle assembly.

2- Slide the base on so that the line guide faces forward. Drill a hole and insert the locating screw.

-- What's the green swivel clip at the back end of the base for? It looks like it's meant to clasp the underside of the mount - but I can't see what it would do in that position.

-- The reel and base came with two big cable ties - do those somehow figure into this installation or are they for mounting the reel without the base? Does anyone recommend doing that with this gun, since I can mount the base if I remove some barrel coating?

3- Once I've got the base and reel mounted, how should I rig line? Should I remove the snubber and thread the reel line onto the swivel spiral, or run the reel line all the way to the shaft? What sort of line and weight would be good - dacron, spectra, mono?

4- If it take out the snubber loop, should I put an in-line snubber between the existing mono and the reel line? If not, how do I tension the line when the gun is loaded?

5- Is the tensioning nut on the reel axle meant to be used as a drag? Can I tighten down on it when playing a fish?

6- Any tips for how to play a fish if I get one I can't just horse in? I wasn't planning to rig for release with a float - I'm dreamin' but not that big yet!

Sorry for all the questions - I tried searching the forums for this but didn't find anything. Any guidance would be a big help.

Thanks,
Mike

Miles, thanks I read through the 10 pages of commentary like it was a suspense novel! Raised my knowledge level by a quantum. Here are some pictures of the setup. I think the mounting should be pretty straightforward once I remove some of the neoprene. I still don't know what the green lever on the back of the reel mount is for. You can see that the slot it sits in is solid around the underside of the mount and open on the top side. If you insert the lever so it goes around the underside, the tip of the lever snaps over the little nub you can see off to one side, but in that position the lever doesn't appear to do anything - there's nothing that it capture or butts against. If you reverse it, it goes across the opening on the top side, which is on top of the gun barrel, but it doesn't look like it fits right in that position, doesn't match anything to the tip or the nub, and also doesn't appear to accomplish anything in that position. I wonder if it has something to do with another gun the mount will fit. It's got me stumped.

Mike

OK, well I should have looked at this a little harder. I thought the tab that comes up along one end of the reel was a line guide, since there's a full length slot in it. That tab is also the stop when you slide the reel in, so if you mount the tab forward, the reel would pull right out under line load. So the base mounts in the other direction, with the green lever forward and the tab behind (so what's it for?). I still don't see that the green lever would do anything.