How far a fish will move on a bait depends on a lot of things, but I've never felt like fishing on the surface over 15' of water at night has been a hot producer for me. More realistically you get bit in 8 feet or less most of the time. Maybe if it was really clear you'd get them over 15, like in the summer ... when the fish were hot and ready to chase.

Hookset, pretty basic... Wait until you feel the fish in your reel. As soon as you feel that resistance in the reel, start winding and sweep back hard and to the side. Never set straight up on the fish, you just knock their mouth open. Sometimes on a long cast you'll hear the bite. Don't jerk it when that happens, just start reeling faster and wait for the pressure in your reel. That way if the fish misses, you can stand a chance for a re-bite. They will come back for it sometimes. The most important thing is to just keep winding to get the slack out of the line. If the fish are on the bait, you won't miss many bites.

The Okuma 7'11" MH is a nice Mattlures rod. I believe it was designed with those baits specifically in mind. There are several other rods in the rod review pages that are nice for those type of smaller lures. You've probably looked at the reviews, but if not here is the link:

http://www.calfishing.com/reviews/rods.html

The St. Croix in particular comes to mind. I just find that the $100 price tag on the Okumas is hard to beat. There's nicer rods out there for sure but they get the job done very nicely, and the actions are true swimbait actions, not some modified flipping stick BS.

Hope that helps some. Do me a favor and toss some pics in the gallery if you whack some big toads this summer at night :)