“’Cause we’re not out at sea yet,” Bert replied. “This is only the bay, and fish don’t come up here on account of too many ships that scare ’em away. You’ll have to wait until we get out where the water is colored blue.”
“Do fish like blue water?” asked Flossie.
“I guess so,” answered Bert. “Anyhow, I don’t s’pose you can catch any fish here, Freddie.”
However, the little Bobbsey twin boy had his own idea about that. He had been planning to catch some fish ever since he had heard about the trip to Florida. Freddie had been to the seashore several times, on visits to Ocean Cliff, where Uncle William Minturn lived. But this was the first time the small chap had been on a big ship. He knew that fish were caught in the sea, for he had seen the men come in with boatloads of them at Ocean Cliff. And he had caught fish himself at Blueberry Island. But that, he remembered, was not in the sea.
“Come on, Flossie,” said Freddie, when Bert and Nan had walked away down the deck. “Come on, I’m going to do it.”
“Do what, Freddie?”
“I’m going to catch some fish. I’ve got my string all untangled now.”
“You haven’t any fishhook,” observed the little girl; “and you can’t catch any fish lessen you have a hook.”
“I can make one out of a pin, and I’ve got a pin,” answered Freddie. “I dassen’t ever have a real hook, anyhow, all alone by myself, till I get bigger. But I can catch a fish on a pin-hook.”
He did have a pin fastened to his coat, and this pin he now bent into the shape of a hook and stuck it through a knot in the end of the long, dangling string.