Rick try these.
1. Use braid
2.Use at least a 3oz lead
3. Use spare time to practice on a water where you are not going to annoy anyone.
4. If it is weedy try a long tail between the lead and marker float , this can help if it's not too weedy.
Cast out let your lead and float, make a note of far bank features so you can re cast it to the same place if you need to reinestigate an area.Let it sink on a tight line,measure off the depth.Retreive slowly a few feet , let the float up again , note any variations in depth.Repeat this till you get the float back to you making a mental note of variations in depth etc.
As for feeling the bottom, oooh er, only practice will help, but generally if it won't come back easily it is eirther weed or heavy /deep silt and if the rod tip jaggers you may have found gravel but it could be mussels or any other hard debris.
Get out and try it.Though but often I see guys trying to tell the carp where to feed and ignoring signs like rolling or jumping fish. It also seems to be the current trend on waters like Linear to ignore the fact that others are fishing and fish are rolling and getting the marker rod out before even looking for fish, absolutley mad , ill mannered and doomed to failure.
