boat is not...

[jasonfish320]

getting on plane... I own a 98 Nitro 896 Savage with a 200hp Merc EFI 25p 3 blade SSprop. and recently I cleaned out everything and ran the boat empty with just me and a friend (I weigh 160, friend is 225) livewells were not filled, half tank of gas. When I filled the wells and we tried to plane out I just couldn't get the boat to do it..it took an entire minute to get it leveled up on plane... I'm guessing that this is because of all the weight I took out of the nose of the boat. I usually have 2 anchors and a bag of tubesand in the front storage. I can't believe the difference without the weight in the front of the boat...of course top speed is still fast WOT 6500RPM 68MPH GPS...I have a 6" jackplate and have the boat currently 3" below pad, I have messed around with it a lot to find the sweet spot and this seems to be it...if I go any higher i really have to watch the RPM's as last time I was hitting 8k and if I go lower I lose almost 5-8mph on the speed...any thoughts?