Fishing with Kevin, Jeff and Stan
One of my favorite stories about my two brothers, Jeff and Kevin, and me is about a particular fishing trip. We fished together quite a bit, all over several counties in our area including Stanislaus, Merced, Tuolumne and San Joaquin. Usually, we took an old green metal Coleman ice chest on our expeditions in which we put our lunch and soda pop. Later in the day we put our catch in it whether it be fish or bullfrogs. One day we ended up on the Merced River, downstream from Lake McSwain and east of Snelling, CA. An elderly woman owned the property on the Merced where we liked to fish. She had given our dad permission to fish there many years before and then also let us have access. The river there had a dam which was designed to allow the water to run over its top, slowing down the flow into shallows in which we could wade and fish. The Merced contains trout, salmon, bass, crappie, perch, bluegill and catfish. At the time of this story which occurred in 1974, I was 17, Jeff was 16