I just bought a Humminbird 717 and after looking at the box images, it looks like the icons for fish are humps, and not fish.   Every graph I have ever used had a fish icon to obviously indicate fish, and then humps to indicate structure, or depth adjustments.

My question is it hard to use a graph that doesn't have fish icons, to distinguish what is structure and what is a fish, or a school of them?  

I have a Garmin that gives you a choice of lines or fish icons.  I turned the fish icons off after learning how inaccurate they are.  There was a video in the online BPS video library that taught me how to interpret the lines.  I will never use the fish icons again.

By all means, turn off the fish icons.  They will lie to you every time.  Learn how to read and interpret the arches and any adjacent structure/cover.

I just bought a Humminbird 717 and after looking at the box images, it looks like the icons for fish are humps, and not fish. Every graph I have ever used had a fish icon to obviously indicate fish, and then humps to indicate structure, or depth adjustments.

My question is it hard to use a graph that doesn't have fish icons, to distinguish what is structure and what is a fish, or a school of them?

No, every graph you ever used thought it saw a fish and indicated it with a fish icon.  It's right less than 50% of the time and every graph instruction manual I've ever seen has a disclaimer in it somewhere stating that very thing.  

Another thing to keep in mind is that there won't be any arches unless you are moving.  If you are going slow or still then you will see flat lines.