Re: fogged nieghborhood
See my thread about my 71 Johnson 9.5 HP not revving out. You need to check it all out. It's time for the exploraratory.

I've already replaced points, plugs, condensors, rebuilt the carbs, and have sprayed Sea Foam 5 times now and the last time it still smoked a lot, although less than the subsequent cleanings. I just bought two new coils today because I think it's likely that's the problem, per iwombat's suggestion as well. In my case, I've got yellowish to yellow sparks on my plugs, and I'm going to do a spark test tomorrow to see how far the sparks jump before installing the new coils. Then check the new coils with a spark test just for confirmation. I'll replace plug wires if I need to, but have confirmed sparks are not jumping from my plug wires, and they do look good.
My compression is only 68 psi on both cylinders, but they say don't worry about that since I'm starting and idling good. But I'm not done with the Sea Foam and it may free up my rings once the thing quits smoking. I'm gonna let a puddle of it sit in the cylinders tonight then blow it all out tomorrow before starting it. I've had a time trying to find the problem, but there's not much left that could be wrong. And I certainly don't like yellow sparks.
If the reeds are stuck, that would show up in the compression readouts (I think), since they're not closing, thus pushing gas/air back out the throat of the carb rather than sealing up good. The way to check that is to take a business card while it's running and hold it in front of the carb throat. If you have a mist of gas on the carb, the reeds are okay. If you have a lot of gas, they're not. Come to think of it, that's one blasted thing I didn't check on my motor! I did take a visual of the reeds when I rebuilt my carb, but didn't remove them and look closer for broken edges, and foreign objects holding them away from the reed stops. They say if damaged the whole read valve assembly (one for each cylinder) has to be replaced. Looks like my manual says that the leafs should barely seat against the stops for a 1971 9.5 HP, and be centered on the alignment marks of the reed housing. On newer, circa 1986 motors, I've read there should be .010 of clearance, which closes completely to prevent gas/air mix from escaping the cylinder on the piston downstroke.
One other thing - is your prop okay? What is the diameter and pitch? If it's damaged or too big, that's one thing that keep it from turning adequate rpms. On my motor I'm turning an 8 1/8 x 8 pitch, which could be a tad big given lower compression and an older motor. I think that was the size of the prop it came with new, so it's possible it could have a harder time 36 years later. But I'm not done tuning my motor, so we'll see.