“I’ll bait it the first time,” he told his sister. “But after that you’ve got to do it yourself.”
“All right,” she agreed. “But maybe if I catch one fish that will be enough and I won’t have to bait my hook again.”
“Maybe,” said Teddy, but he did not believe it. Often he had to bait his hook a number of times before he caught even one small fish.
The Curlytops sat on the edge of the bank at the inlet and began fishing. Teddy had baited his hook with a worm, and Janet was fishing with clam. This, in itself, was a good thing to do, for on some days fish will take one kind of bait, and the next day they will want something else. So when you go fishing, or rather, when two of you go, it is well to take different kinds of bait, for you never can tell what a fish will like.
The tide was coming in slowly, and Teddy said this was a good sign, as the fish came in from the sea with the tide to feed in the inlet.
“Captain Oleson told me so,” declared Teddy.
For some time the Curlytops did not appear to be going to have any luck. Again and again Teddy drew his hook, with its wiggling worm, up from the water, to see if it had been nibbled at. But there was no sign of a fish having been near it.
“Why don’t you pull up your hook and see if you’ve had a nibble,” Ted urged his sister, after a time.
“Oh, I don’t want to,” she answered. “I could tell if I had a bite ’cause my pole would jiggle.”
And just then, to her own great surprise and that of her brother, Janet’s pole gave a big “jiggle.”