Help me with my baitcaster

[thebus71h]

Alright, I just bought a baitcaster from BPS the other day, and have been messing with it quite a bit here in the last few days. I can flip, and pitch it awesome. I can hit the popcorn bowl in the kitchen or at least get it close all the time from lots of different angles and distances. But the problem comes from casting.

And I know it all comes from setup, but I cannot find a happy medium at all, and I think its cause I don't know what the hell I'm doing really when it comes to it. I can set it up so I don't get any backlash at all, but the lure goes about 10 feet and slams into the water. If I change the way I throw it, I may get a bit more (3/4, or sidearm), but that's about it. When I try to loosen up the brakes (they are the centrifigal (SP?) type), I get backlash, and when I tighten that up, and then loosen up the other knob that controls the spin after the lure hits the water, I get backlash. So I have to be doing something majorly wrong, either on when I let my finger off the spool, or how far forward I'm extending. Part of my problem is I want to cast it just like a spinning setup. So basically, my long winded question is... How do you cast a baitcaster compared to a spinning setup?