BUSTARD FISHING AND MINNOW SPINNING. 4! 



CHAPTER II. 

 BUSTARD FISHING AND MINNOW SPINNING. 



IT 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. Armed 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 



