One way to "have you cake and eat it too" is porting of the prop. Porting is explained on several prop mfgr's. sites but basically it allows a small amount of exhaust gasses to exit over the prop blades causing the density of the water to decrease. This allows the engine to rev faster where it is under the most stress (the hole shot) and since hp is (rpm x torque)/5252 you can develop your hp faster and get out of the hole faster.
Down side is that a properly setup hole system will allow the engine to rev about 1k rpm over normal (give or take) until the boat gets up and onto plane developing enough speed to close the holes. If you like to dilly dally just on plane in a cruising mode on a Sunday afternoon sort of thing, you won't seal the holes off and will be running unnecessary rpm for a given speed. Ported props were designed for bass boats with big heavy sterns, usually a fair amount of dead rise at the stern (doesn't plane out as easily as a flat bottom at the stern) and "balls to the wall" once clearing the hole shot.
On what you expected and got, I'm not a prop design engineer, but it's obvious that different companies play with different things in the design of their props for some added benefit. Even if you are using the same series of prop from the same mfgr. you can get variances in performance other than what you are expecting using the 150-200 rpm per inch rule.
Last you have to throw in the boat's effect. With speed and trim setting changes, the load on the props change, so by varying pitch the boat responds differently for a given rpm and part of your problem is probably not all prop related.....the boat's effect on it is changing too.
HTH,
Mark
