Just get a 21' 9" Charger 596 and you ain't got no worries..I've been in all the top name boats and it's the best boat I've ever been in for ride and rough water.

I have a 18.6 triton and I get scared sometimes. Thinking about moving up to 20 footer. But cost and gas keep me from it. So I keep an eye on the weather from my handy dandy iPhone.

I would say 70% of the ride is the driver's ability and knowing his boat. The other 30% is length and hull design

yep, people gonna get gun shy about asking questions if they keep getting bashed around here..

So...I haven't seen it mentioned, but I think prop performance can make a difference here as well. My Ranger likes to ride a little higher with a Fury, which I feel allows me to get up and ride across the waves AND lets me keep the nose up at slower speeds. The Tempst I was running didn't quite generate the lift like the Fury.

I think it makes a noticeable difference in the way the boat handles and responds in all water conditions.

There is a lot of talk about the driver...how are you supposed to drive in rough water? I'm a relative newbie to bass boats.

bottom line is your not gonna be runnin n gunnin in anything over 2', if ya are I hope your hull can handle it.
in rough water running with the waves is much easier to smooth out a ride, you can run some speed even in 2'+.
running against the waves is gonna get rough if you don't know how to trim and balance the hull for the conditions, too much weight back/bow too high and its slam time, too much forward/bow too far down and your gonna spear some if they are big enough.
flat hulls will tend to ride up and over, deep v hulls will tend to cut through, you want to cut through.
one thing I see a lot is people over estimating the wave height, trough to crest 4' would be the width of a sheet of plywood, think of it that way.
something else that helps navigate rough stuff is know the lake, shallow water means higher crests, deeper water means lesser height and generally more spacing = easier to run.
since the op has a bad back getting seat time in the rough stuff would not be a good idea just to learn, the best thing would be to go to a big lake on windy days and watch how different drivers handle the rough stuff, if ya can make it on a tourney day then they will be trying to run as hard as they can.
I watched the skeeter demo drivers beat test riders to death on fork sat before the ram big bass, runnin to much of an diagonal, runnin too much trim/bow up, doing a lot of stuff that made the boats look like an offshore race of 50' boats in 8' swells.

ya gotta learn how to manage the boat to make it ride like ya want and get the performance out of the hull, I will stick with my champion 184 and know I can handle just about anything thrown at me.

I LOVE My 21' Nitro Z-9...

I've been in them ALL,
It Don't get ANY Better than that!!!

Enough Said.....!!!

Nitro Man