The stabilizer plate has certainly improved performance. Gets on plane in a much more reasonable amount of time and steers better at speed. Seems to allow me to hold plane at lower speeds. All and all a good investment. No funny spray patterns even with the hole open.
I still don’t have a complete verdict on the propulse. When I ran the boat with my stock prop and the stabilizer plate it felt better than ever, me and 1 son in the boat, plus the trolling motor and it’s 2 batteries. Next time I went I put on the propulse, but 2 sons and the TM in tow. I think we hit the tipping point for weight. Performance was just not as good. Not a fair trial. The only thing was, I had the propulse at it’s factory pitch, dead middle of its range, and it could not accelerate or get up in rpms. So I dialed it all the way to its least pitch and the performance was just “ok”. Not a fair trial because of the weight, but I was hoping that it would do things I just couldn’t do before. I guess once you get too much weight for the motor there is no magic bullet.