I would first like to say that I love my Talons for fishing. I have a 1995 Ranger 481v (not the vs) 18' and about 86" beam, with 175 Fast Strike, and 4 blade prop. The main issue is the weight of the installed Talons, and where its carried on the boat. The 12 ft. Talons weigh about 75 lbs. each with brackets, sandwich style, and tilts. Originally I put the brackets between the 10" setback and the motor. Absolutely not getting on plane with this setup, no matter how much I raised or lowered the motor. Next move: put the bracket between the transom and jack plate. A bit better now but takes 6-8 seconds before she rolls over. I read somewhere that for every foot back behind the transom, you are doubling the weight. Not sure if I believe this or not, but after sinking over 4 grand into these things, what's another $300 for a 6" setback. You see, one of the other issues with the weight is the transom freeboard is about 3-4 ", and the wave when you go off plane about swamps you. These older boats have an open splashwell, unlike most of the new ones. Even with new setback installed the freeboard gain was minimal - you have to be very vigilant about waves and boat wakes swamping the back of the boat. With the new setback, rollover is maybe a sec or 2 better and top speed 60mph. This is down from 65-68mph pre-Talons but we can live with it. I would also suggest you consider the weight carried of 3 tm batteries, 3 bank charger, oil res, I carry about 80lbs of gear behind the seats. Never use the live wells, plugged off, and now keep 1 of the 2 23 gal gas tanks with only about 10 gals in it. Forget the 112 ultrex idea, the extra weight of the 4th battery would never work. Another problem is the trailer is single axle, and the added weight so far behind the wheels causes a light tongue weight and trailering sway becomes an issue. I moved the winch post as far forward as it will go to shift the weight more to the front, but because the transom has all the weight, this was a minimal gain. Currently have added 40lbs of weight, from a home gym, to the underside of the trailer, below the winch post, and saw big improvement.
Thanks for listening. Hopefully this helps make someone thinking about Talons realize there are other issues to be considered other than what a great asset to fishing the Talons are.