How to get rid of excessive vertical whitespace

[Roger House]

I'm using Lyx for the first time and find it, by and large, quite nice.
However, I've run into a situation where Lyx's automatic vertical layout
is creating ugly output.  Example:
  input
    text
    small figure
    caption
    text
    large figure (taking an entire page)

  output
    PAGE BREAK
    text
    small figure
    LOTS OF VERTICAL WHITESPACE
    caption
    LOTS OF VERTICAL WHITESPACE
    text
    PAGE BREAK
    large figure (taking an entire page)

I want a page break before the large figure, so that works fine.  
However the
vertical whitespace is really unacceptable.  I understand that the 
algorithm
is trying to spread things out uniformly in the vertical direction, but in
this case, I would like all the vertical whitespace to go away and just let
the printed portion of the page stop wherever it stops.  (Also, the 
whitespace
between the figure and the caption just seems plain wrong.  I have the 
caption
marked "Definitely here", but my idea of "here" does not seem to agree with
the way it works.)

I would greatly appreciate any advice on how to prevent the layout shown
above.

Thank you,

Roger House