Jetty Fishing for Bass

Let’s assume you want to fish a jetty situation. So rocks leading out to a deeper bottom.

Do you position yourself close to the rocks and cast out to deeper water, working the lure in, or do you position yourself over the deeper water and cast towards the rocks and work the lure from shallow to deep? Or do you work back and forth parallel to the rocks starting shallow and moving deeper with each pass or parallel starting deeper and moving closer to the rocks with each pass?

Or something I haven’t thought of?

I’ve always thought of bass as bottom dwelling fish that are basically looking up to ambush swimming bait fish from below, so moving the lure from shallow to deeper makes sense if the fish are waiting in the deeper water to attack. I’ve always thought this was the way to go.

But the other side of the coin is “fish the structure” and since the rocks are the structure, it would make sense to move parallel to them working close and staying on top of the structure.

Any thoughts/experiences on this?

I look forward to the salt crew on this. 
For freshwater I use all three. Some days the fish want the lure trolled or ripped parallel, some days they want something drifting down to them along the rocks, and sometimes they are waiting at the very bottom.  

I hope this helps

That is a big question but a great question, I say yes to that rocks are the structure fishing parallel to the rocks would be my starting strategy. If that did not produce I would then go from deep waters to shallow next.
Don't forget though that the current plays a big part of the equation is the current. Fish like to orient themselves into the current to pick off there pray as it comes by. But I would always start structure first them move to deep to shallow. That is my 2 cents good luck.

i usually mix everything up. structures, shallow, deep. you just have to find the fish if they are not biting in one spot.