What you're trying to do with a bass rig is very different from what you're doing with a dry fly. With a dry fly, you shouldn't be shooting line, but handling long lengths of line in the air for a delicate presentation. Thought I'll add, I've shot a DT to the end of the line on Heddon 2f cane.
The old Rocket taper was a short-belly line made for shooting distance, and was the bass bug line.
With long-belly lines in the salt, the goal is shooting max distance on that single, important cast. They're actually not made for fishing, but for shooting a single sight-cast to max distance.
Fishing, you'd like to be able to get your speed up on a single back-cast, then shoot to your fishing distance - over and over. The point of a bass bug taper.
For max distance, I go subsurface to a Teeny line, T130 etc. It does exactly what I described. A roll-cast to bring everything to the surface, a single back-cast to bring up line speed, and shoot. In the salt, I've consistently shot my TS250 out to 140', leader, line and backing (not on a single back-cast, but with a couple to bring up line speed, and with a shooting basket).
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