One thing great casters have the ability to do (not me), is cast their line low to the water so that it doesn't have much time to retract. I'm not there yet. I just get the feel of my line weight with a couple of switch casts and adjust the power of my forward cast to match. As I strip out more line to shoot, I test cast a couple more times to get my power to where it needs to be.

Takes a little time, but it works.