I appreciate all the input. I have not tried running without the air filter yet. I figured my air filter shouldn't be too bad on a 2021 with 80 hrs. Also, took a quick look and it looked like a little bit of a pain to remove. (a little more than just opening a housing and pulling it out)
I will say I had the boat fully loaded with 8 adults and three coolers yesterday and I was getting 29 mph at 7200rpm at WOT. I was pleased with that. Since I was only getting 32 mph with minimal loading I thought that was pretty good.
I also had no problem pulling one adult wakeboarder with 7 other adults on board. I did get bogged down and limited to about 23 mph at WOT when I had 5 adults on board and pulling a big tube/inflatable with 3 adults on it.
29 with 8 people and 3 coolers doesn't sound terrible. Little slower than I would like, but certainly in the realm of acceptable. Definitely on plane and moving at least as fast as the pontoon boats
8 people and 3 coolers is DAMN crowded through for that boat. I'm impressed. I've had 6 teenagers and 2 adults on ours, and while we weren't attempting speed runs we were wakeboarding quite a bit and the little 190 did a fine job. It didn't jump out like a dedicated tow boat, but it didn't drown my beginners I was teaching either.
In terms of speed, next time out try something for me. Move the weight from the front to the back while watching speed, and not touching the throttle. We have a "no kids weekend" each year, and a few years ago I was the "shuttle boat" to the cove from the dock. One trip out I had my wife and I, and (2) other couples on board. One of the guys brought the largest effing Yeti cooler I've ever seen. It was so damn big that it just sat on the upper deck of the swim platform, we couldn't get it in the boat. On the way out, in the morning with all 6 people behind the windshield and stupid cooler on the back, we ran right at 42mph WOT from the dock to the cove. One the way back, aside from filtering some beers from the cooler through ourselves and into the lake, we had the same 6 people and the same stupid cooler. This time though it was late in the day and the "girls" sat in the bow. We only managed 37mph. 5mph drop just by moving 3 people into the bow. Same revs, roughly the same load (arguably a little lighter on fuel and beer), and same weather. That bow loading will absolutely KILL your speed. I've since re-arranged the storage on ours, and the only "heavy" stuff up front is the 22lb Navy Anchor I keep in the forward locker. Front port is blow up floaties and the umbrella, front starboard is kids toys. Coolers are under the port bench, tube and watersports crap is in the starboard rear seat. Mines lost a step or two in 7 seasons, and I top out at ~40mph with a light load now.
Only mods I have are a ribbon delete (removed spark arrestor), L13 Cone with 1 spacer removed (gold one), and a sealed intake tunnel. I've never had the impeller out of mine, and not done anything performance wise to the engine/exhaust. Now that I think about it, I'm still running on the 2017 air filter at ~240hrs. I should look into that.