My mind was filled with an unusual amount of chatter considering it was 4:30 a.m. I was headed to the South Platte River for my first encounter this season with a hatch of small mayflies known to fly fishers as Tricos, which is short for their scientific genus name, Tricorythodes.

The South Platte’s Tricos tend to be large as Tricos go and are imitated with flies tied on a size 20 or 22 hook. I’ve fished Trico hatches on Midwestern and eastern rivers that are commonly imitated on size 24 or size 26 hooks. But, none of that was on my mind driving to the river.

I was wondering why there was so much traffic on the road. They couldn’t all be headed to the river, I thought. You must escort that kind of thinking from your mind just like you would any errant thought that sneaked in if you were sitting in meditation. However, I did see a car ahead of me with a “Catch and Release” vanity license plate that I reasoned must be going to the river.

It’s been my habit for many years to arrive on the water at first light, although the Trico duns don’t usually hatch until later. My early arrival has more to do with a desire, or more accurately, a need to witness the river when it comes alive first thing in the morning.

This desire isn’t just poetry, either. Part of it has to do with the competitive fly fishing guide that still resides in me, although I retired from guiding many years ago.

I know that the trout will rise to Tricos up and down the river and there will be ample opportunities to catch them in a multitude of locations and I’ve done that, but I have a spot that I like fishing above all others. Arriving early doesn’t guarantee I’ll get that spot because there are other anglers, most of whom I know by sight if not by name, that might beat me to it, but it does increase my chances.

On this day, which was a Friday, the parking lot was empty. I was taking my time gearing up when another vehicle pulled up right behind my truck. A guy got out, rather quickly to my way of thinking, geared up, and headed down to the river. My past life as a competitive fishing guide was going wild in my head. I managed to calm down and told myself, “It is what it is, I can catch a trout anywhere.”

Some of that was bravado, but it was also a statement of my faith in the South Platte River, the Trico hatch and spinner fall, and the river’s free-rising trout.I made my way to the water and saw the “guy” was indeed in my spot. I hadn’t rigged up my fly rod yet and waded across the river and stood on the bank a little way upstream from him. It was still too early to see any rising trout, but I rigged up a size 20 Trico Hackle Stacker dry fly imitation with a wingless Trico spent spinner as a trailer. Then I did something I don’t usually do. I walked down to the other angler and said, “I’m not trying to push in on you, but do you mind if I fish upstream or downstream from you?”

I was surprised when he said, “Not at all.” We talked for a while. I told him that when it comes to Tricos, I was a “dry fly snob” and would wait for the trout to begin rising and stay out of his way. I then headed downstream to what turned out to be a long wait before I saw a rise. It was the only rise I saw to a hatching Trico dun. I made my cast, hooked the trout and that was it.

I’d moved upstream of the other angler when the Trico duns, which had taken to the air to form huge mating swarms over the river, started to fall dead, or in fly fisher speak, “spent” to the water’s surface and the trout began to rise.

I switched my trailing fly to a spent spinner imitation and made casts to specific rising trout rather than flock shooting towards pods of rising fish. A few of the trout that took my presentations were very nice-sized brown trout.

When trout are rising like crazy to a spinner fall time ceases to exist. You work to make your casts as good as you’re capable of. You watch for any “drag” on the dry fly that will spook the fish and are on “point” for the subtle take of your artificial fly imitation by a trout that thinks it has taken a natural insect.

It was a good day and pretty much over by 10 a,m. The other angler turned to me then and said, “I have to go to work now. Nice meeting you.”

I understood then that meeting him on the water was as much a part of my good day as the trout I’d caught and released.