02' 225 EFI Flooding, hard to start

[chaiseb]

So after several months of trying different things and reading and taking the boat in to the shop I've decided to ask on here
and see if anyone has any idea what's going on with this motor. The problem is that the boat is intermittently very hard to start. Usually in the mornings it cranks right up and when i run out to my first spot, about 40 minute run and fish for a while, it is very difficult to start back up. It is flooding, i can smell it and it has worn my battery down cranking on it so much. If i trim the motor way up to troll shallow water, the motor always has a super hard time cranking and it floods, why this happens i can't figure out since it's fuel injected. Anyway, now the motor is giving me trouble cranking first thing in the morning. If i disconnect the fuel line and crank on it to burn the residual fuel out of the cylinders it fires up, coughs, smokes and i reconnect the fuel line and it straightens up. It bogs down coming out of the hole alot of the time when these issues are occuring. The boat once it gets up and I run it runs fine, top end is fine, throttle response is good when running. If I stop the boat and fish and I crank it every 20 minutes or so it usually fires up pretty easily. The other morning i had a hard time cranking it and a couple of times the fuel pump would continue to try and prime the fuel rail for an excessive amount of time and i had to turn the key off and back on to get it to stop.
so far i've had the fuel pump checked, compression good all around, VST, fuel samples are fine, the shop said there was intermittent loss of spark on cylinders 2 and six and they cleaned the plug boots and all and the problem resolved. but that's not the problem. because it's still doing the same thing. injectors were balanced and blueprinted last year,chris carson reeds, new spark plugs QL77C like there supposed to have. new cranking battery over 1000 CCA, run stabil in it. non ethanol fuel, all the fuel lines are ethanol resistant. any help would be greatly appreciated!! thanks -Chaise