Help! Slightly underpowered, majorly overpropped. Recommendation?

[nlparker2]

So, I bought a lovely, roomy, stable, 2003 Alumacraft Invader 195 (19'4" x92" beam, 1450lb dry weight) bass boat last spring. Have had out about 30 times, great boat. It came with a Yamaha F115 which was lower than its rated capacity (150) but planed and ran the boat fine. ~42 GPS top speed. Only problem is, I've never been able to get more than 5400 rpm even under ideal conditions (cool, dry air, light chop, etc.). Motor is in good shape, ~125 hours, all maintenance done. Now, as its heating up in NE Oklahoma, I"m only getting about 5100-5200 rpm. I know this motor should be running around 5800-6000 rpm, so off to the local Yamaha dealer I go with my prop.

Turns out, whoever put the motor on this boat had a huge 14.5x17 prop on it. Like a pontoon prop. Yamaha recommends a 13-13.5" x 15-17 prop with this boat/motor combination, and the comparable G3 boat with F115 runs a 13.25x17. Given my rpms, just going down an inch or so in diameter will get me into the upper end of the RPM range.

I want to get my max RPmS and the best performance I can out of what I have, but I don't want to spend $1500 swapping out props to get there. I also don't want any "well, just buy a 150" posts, because believe me, if I could do that I would have done it already.

So, prop recommendations in the 13"-13.5" x17-18 range?

[Byrdmen]

Similar situation.

Keep in mind that the pitch rating on props is somewhat subjective, a 17 pitch prop from one company may be very different from a 17p from another.

I have had reasonable good luck with a 17p Turbo1 but am getting better than 0 slip which tells me the Turbo1 is greater than the rated pitch.

Ken at Propgods/Band of Boaters suggested a Powertech SCD for my 2014 F115LB. I have also been looking at the aluminum Talon lone of props from Yamaha but they are overrated by about 3” per Yamaha. I will be buying a 14” pitch Talon Aluminum as a ski prop while using the Turbo1 for fishing and cruising.

YMMV