Thanks fellas. I did press down on the throttle linkages and wiggle them about to see if I could drop the revs. I could push it down and stall the engine but it would return to high idle after restart. I also tried pulling on the manual choke a little while it was high idling but I couldn't drop the rpm other than stall it (I wasn't being particularly delicate though as I was hurrying while other boats were queuing behind me at the ramp). The manifold gasket is new 6 months ago but I reused the carby gaskets after I cleaned them. I'll go ahead and loosen off all the bolts and retorque them and Will rebalance while I'm at it. I'll check the plugs too and see if any of them look different as this might narrow it down to a particular carby. I won't pull off the manifold and carbies just yet, I'll wait and see how the quick and easy stuff works out for me. I'll start another thread about the procedure for setting the mixture screws on multi carbies as I'm curious how others do it. Thanks again hondadude and jgmo, I'll keep the post updated as I make progress but it will be a little slow as this engine only sees the water once every week or two.
on a side note, took my dad out fishing for his first time on my boat this week, he was trying to help out and started up the motor for me while I was getting the trailer. The leg wasn't in the water and I came back to a burning rubber smell, there went my impeller with 10 hours on it. Poor bloke felt terrible, luckily it was at the end of the fishing trip not the beginning.