How to measure water depth?

I am relatively new to fishing, so forgive me if this seems a silly question.

Many-a-time i have been fishing and many a time i have had nothing....now i normally set my bait from the float at roughly a meter - ofcourse not all water is 1 meter or more deep.

i'd like to know if there's a method of testing how deep the water is at my cast out range, if i were to know this it would allow me to set my bait at alternative depths instead of just dragging along the bottom.

many thanks for any info.

try here for a start off, Plumbing the depth

thats great, very informative, i never new what the piece of cork was for in my plumb bomb, i just used to cast it out as a ledger lol

once you know how deep it is, what depth is best? i had been told maybe 15/20cm off the bottom, or if the water is shallow, 5cm off the bottom. is this true?

depends really if the roach ate up in the water ( at the top ) you want to fish a foot or so deep. if you are fishing for bottom feeders ( bream carp barbel ... ) then you want about 4 inches to lay on the bottom. if you arnt getting biites change it about a bit the fish could be at any level in the water

hope this helps

jack

[flaky-jakey@hotmail.co.uk]

if youre in a weedy peg,

fish just off the top of the weed,

works well for the tench,

but i you want the carp,

be on the bottom