The blue-winged olive hatches and the rising trout that go with them eluded me for the entire month of May.

That elusion included my annual spring trip to the Frying Pan River. A group of us makes this pilgrimage every spring in hopes of fishing the first mayfly hatch of the season.

We did see a few “olives” on the water and in the air during the trip, but the trout didn’t bother to rise to them. I should say a couple of the guys managed to induce a few takes to blue-winged olive dry fly imitations, but that isn’t the same as fishing to a full-blown hatch where every trout in the river rises with reckless abandon.

We did do some business with scattered pods of trout rising to midges, but that’s always a difficult cat-and-mouse game without the exuberance of an olive hatch.

Anglers like to find reasons to explain their bad luck, and we glommed on to higher water volumes coupled with lower water temperatures than we are accustomed to, but there wasn’t any hard evidence to support it affected the hatch.

We were more likely just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This isn’t to say my fly fishing friends across the state weren’t reporting good hatches and lots of rising trout. This time around, they clearly must have been in the right places at the right times. That’s the only way to explain it.

With all of this in mind, I decided to drive to South Park to fish the Middle Fork of the South Platte River where there was virtually no chance that I’d encounter an olive hatch.

I figured the Dream Stream tailwater section of the South Platte was nearby if I felt the urge to chase the possibility of an olive hatch there, but that wasn’t really the point.

As much as anything, I was looking to slip off into the middle of nowhere, away from the tailwater crowds, and find some water to myself.

When I arrived on the Middle Fork the first surprise was I wasn’t the only fly fisher in the “middle of nowhere.” There were already four vehicles in the parking lot and a couple more parked along the road. The good news was there was plenty of room to spread out and the swallows were busily darting and swooping in pursuit of insects around the bridge over the river. That can never be a bad omen, because they eat the same insects that the trout do.

The one thing I didn’t expect was the condition of the river. The volume was up, and the water was discolored. I wouldn’t say it was muddy but definitely “tinted.” I’d fantasized clear water and hungry trout, but should have expected some runoff. Nonetheless, I geared up in hip waders and chose my 4-weight graphite rod over a bamboo rod, figuring I might need a little more backbone when the inevitable South Park wind came up later in the day. I knotted a size 14 tan Elk Hair Caddisfly imitation to the tippet and added a green Flash Midge beadhead nymph for a dropper.

Rather than hike upstream before I started fishing, I decided to begin right at the bridge near the parking area.

I figured the swallows must be eating something that was hatching from the stream, and maybe the trout were on to it, too. However, I didn’t get any strikes there and proceeded to methodically fish my way upstream. I mostly covered the water near the banks on my side of the river and occasionally added multiple casts to what looked like especially productive water. Sadly, my diligence wasn’t rewarded with any takes on the dry fly or dropper.

Eventually, I came to a smaller stream that feeds into the main stem of the Middle Fork. The water was a bit clearer, and I’d fished it to good effect in past years, so I decided to fish it again.

It was small enough that I could cover all the water, which I did, making sure to spend extra time on the pools, back eddies and undercut banks. It wasn’t long before I hooked my first “dink,” which is angler-speak for a very small trout. This one was a 4-inch-long wild brown trout. It’s the kind of trout you must be careful you don’t flip off into the bushes when you set the hook! I dutifully brought the little guy to hand and released him.

The dink didn’t surprise me. I’d caught them in this section of water before and figured there was always the chance that a few larger trout might also be there to feed on the small ones. I caught several more dinks before the wind came up, and I decided to call it a day.

I cherry-picked the best-looking water on my way back to the parking area without success. When I got near the bridge, my Elk Hair Caddis went down, indicating a trout had taken the dropper nymph. I set the hook and brought an 8-inch rainbow trout to net. It was clearly a stocked fish and, on another day, I might have discounted it, but on this day, under these conditions, I was glad to catch and then release it.

There was one other car left in the parking lot when I got there. Two anglers were busy stowing their gear in the trunk. I asked them how they did. They said they’d walked quite a way upstream before they started fishing and never got a strike.

I told them I managed to avoid getting skunked thanks to a couple of dinks and a stocker. To which one of the fishermen replied, “Any port in a storm!”