I was talking to a buddy about ice fishing the other day, and he said he kept moving around on the lake, drilling over 30 holes trying to find some active fish.

The fishing was generally poor until very late in the day when he finally began catching a decent number of fish.

When he told me that, I thought of my own fishing excursions on the ice when I was trying to decide if I should move to another location or stay where I was, and hopefully have some schools of fish show up.

To be honest, it takes some time and preparation to change locations on a lake when ice fishing; you have to load everything up in your sled and pull it to the new spot, and then more holes have to be drilled.

By the same token, there have been times when ice fishing that staying patiently in one location paid off: after sitting for two hours without a strike, all the sudden a large school of fish showed up, and the action was crazy.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized that we hunting and fishing types are faced with the “Move on or stay put?” question all the time.

More than once, I’ve been fly fishing a favorite stretch on a local stream, and the trout just weren’t cooperating, so I would convince myself to move to the lower end of the stretch in hopes the fish might be more willing to take my offering. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes after I relocated, someone else moved into where I started and began catching fish right away; maybe I should have stayed where I started.

That “move on or stay put” thought doesn’t just apply to fishing situations.

How many times have we been out deer hunting in a stand we were fairly confident would produce, because our trail cameras showed up some nice bucks on several occasions, and rubs and scraps were all around a well-used trail?

After sitting patiently for six or more hours, you began to have some doubts, and the question comes up, “Should I stay put or move to some other location?”

If you hit that same stand every day for a week and nothing shows up, there’s a good chance you are going to move on.

I’ve had this happen when turkey hunting on several occasions. I set up one morning in spring gobbler season in a location where I had seen several gobblers in the previous weeks. After sitting and occasionally calling for a couple of hours without any responses, I decided to “move on.” I hardly walked 40 yards when I suddenly flushed three big gobblers from some thick hemlocks. Maybe I should have “stayed put instead of moving on.”

Obviously, I don’t have an answer to the question, “Do I move on or stay put?’ I’m sure there are many other factors that go into where we locate and whether another location would be better.

In the meantime, I may get out ice fishing next week, and if I don’t catch anything in the first couple of hours, will I “move on”?