@MichaelaH Hi Michaela,
I love your facial expressions on your characters, you always capture great emotions!!
Just so I can understand properly, do you want the two illustrations and text to be part of the same story? At the moment, the text doesn't make a lot of sense when put together, the illustrations could work together though. If your fisherman is fishing at the side of a lake/pond, maybe you could put Flip down in the bottom right corner just peeking up from the water, and he's listening to the joke the bait is telling? Then he goes on to tell Berry? That's only a suggestion anyway, your fisherman illustrations looks wonderful as it is and will work wonderfully as it's own piece.
In terms of the text, maybe something like:
Little Bait had to think quickly so that he could make his escape.
"You don't want me!" he said earnestly "I'm far too small and smelly for the other fish in there, they won't want to eat me! I'm bad bait! VERY BAD BAIT!"
etc etc then he goes on to tell the joke somehow?
It's only a suggestion but do you see what I mean? If you're going to use both illustrations as a double page spread, then you have more room to maybe rewrite the text so that it fits with what is going on in your illustrations 