When Al Lindner and Ty Sjodin pulled into Indian Hills Resort in North Dakota, they weren’t expecting to be fishing 10 feet lower than usual. But that’s the reality of reservoir systems, and if you want to stay on fish when the water drops, you’d better be able to adapt quickly.
Armed with Humminbird electronics and the Minn Kota Quest trolling motor, Al and Ty leaned on mapping adjustments, trolling motor precision, and jigging techniques to stay in the zone and catch quality walleyes despite the tough conditions.
Their success wasn’t about luck. It was about using the right tools and knowing how to dial them in. 
Reservoir Realities: Why Falling Water Changes Everything
Reservoirs are some of the most dynamic fisheries in the country. Unlike natural lakes, many reservoirs fluctuate dramatically due to flood control, irrigation, or drought cycles. It’s not uncommon to see water levels swing by 10 to 30 feet throughout the season.
“We got here, started moving around, and the depth just wasn’t matching our LakeMaster chip,” Ty explains. “Turns out the water had dropped 10 feet.”
That kind of drop doesn’t just affect structure; it completely throws off your mapping and depth references. Points, flats, and breaklines you’ve fished in years past may no longer sit at the same depths, and fish patterns can shift fast.
So before tying on a jig, the first step was adjusting the electronics to match reality.
Humminbird Water Level Offset: The First Critical Adjustment
With 10 feet of water missing, the first thing Ty did was go into the Humminbird unit and dial in the Water Level Offset feature. This tool allows you to manually adjust your depth contours to reflect the actual water level.
How to Change Water Level Offset:
- Go to your Humminbird menu
- Navigate to Chart settings
- Scroll to Water Level Offset
- Input a negative number based on how much the water is down (e.g. -10 ft)
This quick adjustment brings your contour lines back into alignment with real-world structure, so when you’re looking at a breakline or a hump on your map, it’s actually there, not 10 feet below the surface.
Using Depth Highlight to Find the Walleye Zone
Once the water level is corrected, Depth Highlight becomes an even more powerful tool.
By highlighting a specific depth band, for example, 22 to 28 feet, Al and Ty could quickly scan the map for areas that matched where walleyes were being reported. It also allowed them to visualize subtle structure that might otherwise get overlooked when depth lines are all the same color.
This combination of offset correction and targeted highlighting saves time and narrows the search window, crucial when dealing with a massive body of water that looks totally different from what it did a month earlier.
Spot-Lock in Big Wind: Power from the Minn Kota Quest
The Spot-Lock feature is at the heart of it all. When you’re over a productive piece of structure, you can hit one button and stay put; no anchor, no drifting, no re-spotting after every drift.
And when you pair Spot-Lock with accurate mapping and fish positioning, you’re able to make repeat casts to active fish without the hassle of boat control taking you off target.
Walleye Tactics That Worked: Jigging in Flats and Deep Water
Even with the electronics dialed in, the walleyes weren’t stacked in big schools. Instead, Al and Ty worked two patterns throughout the day:
1. Scattered fish on big tapering flats
These slick-bottom areas had no rocks or weeds, just isolated pods of fish, often just one to three at a time, cruising slowly. Precision casting and sonar interpretation were key here.
“You see one to three at a time. They’re moving around really fast,” Al explains. “But when you hit one, you know you’re doing it right.”
2. Deep jigging in 28 feet
The second pattern focused on fish grouped deeper, where jigging raps excelled. This is where real-time sonar paid off. Watching fish come up, follow the bait, or ghost away helped them adjust cadence and weight.
With the help of Minn Kota positioning and Humminbird sonar, they could stay over deep fish and work them until one committed, no drifting off and no guesswork.
Stay One Step Ahead of Falling Water
Fishing falling water can feel overwhelming, especially when your maps don’t match the lake, and the structure you remember is buried in the wrong depth zone. But with tools like Humminbird’s Water Level Offset and Minn Kota’s Spot-Lock, you’re never really behind the curve.
Instead of chasing fish and fighting the wind, Al Lindner and Ty Sjodin adapted their electronics and focused on staying efficient. The result? A successful walleye trip, even in tough conditions.
If you fish reservoirs, or plan to, take a few minutes to learn your electronics inside and out. Because when the water drops and the wind kicks up, the anglers who are dialed in still catch fish!
