CHAPTER II. 



BUSTARD FISHING AND MINNOW SPINNING. 



T may perhaps be worth while to say something in 

 small compass on the very killing method of 

 angling, little practised in Yorkshire, which is 

 known as bustard-fishing. The bustard is a large 

 moth, white or brown, and may be dressed thus on 

 a No. 4 or 5 hook. The White Bustard : wings 

 from a White Owl's quill feather ; body, white Berlin 

 wool, ribbed with yellow silk, or gold tinsel ; head, black 

 Ostrich herl, used sparingly ; legs, from a white cock's hackle. 

 The Brown Bustard is thus dressed : wings, from a quill or 

 tail feather of a Brown Owl ; body, brown fur from a hare's 

 neck, mixed with a little common worsted, and any brown 

 hackle run all the way up it. These flies need not be spared 

 in the dressings, and without illustrating them the size of 

 hook will serve as a guide in the dressing of the fly. 



Bustard fishing demands an amount of self-denial and 

 general discomfort to which the writer, at least, is not equal, 

 but very heavy baskets of large fish are often made by it 

 when no other bait is looked at. ned with one, or both 

 of the moths described above, with a spare cast round your 

 hat in case of accident, using a cast about six feet long, and 

 throwing a line not much, if any, longer than your rod, you 

 begin fishing as soon as it is perfectly dark. Trout will 

 rarely take the bustard in the dusk, and on a summer's 

 night, which is your only bustard time, you need scarcely 



