Joel Nelson helps you track and understand seasonal fish movements by utilizing your Humminbird’s depth highlight feature.

Seasonal Fish Movements

When it comes to seasonal movements of fish, one very important tool is the Humminbird mapping and depth highlight feature on the mapping. You can use this concept to locate all types of game fish like walleyes, muskies, pike and bass throughout the year. 

You are always going to have some shallow fish and some deep fish throughout the year. The idea is that when you depth highlight this range during this part of the season, that is where most of the fish on lake are going to be and it is where we will be able to most effectively target them.

The start of the seasonal fish pattern movements begins shortly after ice out as fish begin to move shallow in anticipation for the spawn. 

You will want to go into your mapping feature on your Humminbird unit and highlight a depth range between zero and twelve feet of water. This will give you a picture of where fish will be in spring and eliminate a lot of dead water and allow you to find fish easier. 

You will want to be focusing on shoreline structures and main lake points throughout the month of May and into early June.  

Once those water temperatures start to climb in June, you will want to change your highlight depth range to twelve to twenty-five feet of water.  Mid-lake structures will start to pop up and it will highlight those secondary breaks that fish move to post-spawn. 

Now as we move into deep summer you will want to adjust the highlight depth range to twenty-five to thirty-five feet of water. A lot of the fish will be in deeper basins, where trolling and other deep-water strategies will come into play. 

As summer turns to fall, fish will start to make movements back in shallow and you will once again want to bring your highlight depth range to shallow water depths. 

Using your depth highlight range to help track seasonal fish movements is going to make you a better angler.