I worked up a little show and tell. It shows what should have happened from your description. It might help to see how AOA of the wing and tail works.

The model at #1 is with the everything as designed and the airplane flying along in trim at full throttle. The wing is being asked to carry the weight at that speed and basically finds what AOA gets the job done. It's pitch decides how the fuselage pitches and the fuselage decides how the tail pitches. Since the tail design was figured for all the rest, you see the elevator trim is about zero.

The model at #2 has the wing bolts loose and the wing is hanging down in back. The airplane hasn't taken off yet.

The model at #3 has taken off and the wing has the same weight to carry and very close to the same speed so it'll assume the same AOA. This pitches the fuselage and the attached tail up and what happens to the tail. It's now forced into a negative AOA by the more powerful wing. So it lifts down. If you don't do anything on the TX, the airplane won't fly level. So you trim the elevator so the lift back there doesn't keep pushing the airplane out of level flight. You've got to get rid of some of the excess down, so you trim the elevator. It winds up looking like it does now in #3. (Basically the airplane is screwed up in terms of drag. The fuselage isn't at it's best drag angle, and the tail is now less than a slick, low drag symmetrical profile.)

So you decide to fly again but now screw the wing in to it's design incidence angle. The plane starts to fly and #4 is what the air sees. It sees basically the airplane in #1 but with elevator trim that wants to push the tail up.

This make it easier to see????