Oar Length Advice...Mini Max

So… I have a Mini Max with a welded frame and am feeling ‘over-oared’ when I row.

Details:
-Oar towers (welded/fixed position) are 8″ tall
-Oarlock span is 54″
-Running 8′ Cataract SGG’s with their Magnum II blades.
-Running the NRS low-back seat on a seat bracket, so I’m sitting ~3″ up from the frame
-When the stops are set up to give me ~2″ of space between the handles (26″/oar) with the oars perpendicular to the waterline, 73+% of the oar length is outside of the oarlock
-I’m a pretty small guy (5’7″ & 145lbs) and most of that weight is in my legs… think runner/cyclist physique
-The seat position relative to the oar locks feels great, though I do feel like the handles could be up a little higher (~2-3″) to put me in the ‘push up’ position when the blades are in the water. The frame setup requires me to run the seat, so that’s always part of the equation.

Chatter:
My oars have felt unwieldily from the start… it’s bumming me out. It seems that I either have too much oar outside of the oarlock relative to its overall length and/or the blades catch too much water. Further, feels like the oars and are too heavy out of the water and I have suboptimal leverage on them once in the water… it’s killing my joints. This experience is in stark contrast to the setup on my 13′ raft where I’m running a 60″ wide NRS frame, 8″ NRS towers, and 9′ oars (SGG’s with Magnum II blades).

My thought is to trim 6″ off of each oar in hopes of giving me a little more control/leverage relative to the oar’s length and to steepen the angle with the waterline to help bring the handles up a bit. When I calc out oar length with the NRS formula (54″/2)-2″)*3 I get tiny F’ing 6.3′ oars. In applying Zach C’s formula (54″ *1.63) I get 7.3′ oars. So, while I understand oar length can be somewhat subjective/preferential, 8′ oars seem (and feel) too long.

Does it seem reasonable to trim a little length and/or entertain the potential of smaller/lighter blades? Which would be more effective in solving my issue?