There are going to be different scenarios in different bodies of water, but a couple of the places I target them, you can pretty much follow their pattern from tight to shore at first ice, you can follow them out deeper and deeper as the season progresses, then right back in again towards seasons end. One of my local spots is like clockwork, I can almost literally take ten more steps out every week until I hit the deepest part of the cove, fish there for a weekend, then a few steps back towards the shallows each trip until ice out. Of course you always have the big girls roaming in, what seems to be, no particular pattern.