I used to fish a notts lake years ago where the carp had seen it all before,
It was about 11 foot deep with the ubiquitus island in its centre, the going was generally difficult using bottom baits as I suspected it was covered in large amounts of uneaten boillies, lunchean meat and any other bait thrown at the residents.
I began to use the simple approach like keith mentioned but with a BIG lobworm that was injected with air on the end of an 8foot hooklink to a two ounce lead.
Carp were very attracted to the lobs movements and some days I could take three or four double figure fish with the setup.
It should'nt be too difficult to set a lobworm just below the surface in some 5 foot of water.
It could be one way of overcoming the recantly imposed ban on surface baits.