NEW ORLEANS – After winning races in bunches at Evangeline Downs and Delta Downs in the last few years, jockey Colby Hernandez has brought his tack to Fair Grounds with the intention of showing that he’s ready to step up in class. Hernandez is off to a solid start. With six wins in the first five racing days, he stood in a second-place tie with Francisco Torres in the jockeys’ race, one win behind Florent Geroux. On Thursday, Hernandez won the season’s first stakes race, urging Control Stake to a front-running victory in the Thanksgiving Handicap. “The last sixteenth of a mile, Colby Hernandez was the difference in winning and losing,’’ said Tom Amoss, who trains Control Stake. Before working a horse for trainer Al Stall Jr. on a recent morning, Hernandez expressed confidence that he can hold his own here. “It’s going to be a lot tougher on a track like this,’’ said Hernandez, a 27-year-old native of Lafayette, La. “We have good business, and we’re going to have a good meeting.” No matter how 2015 wraps up for Hernandez, it will be the most productive year in his career, which began in 2006. He ranks third among the nation’s jockeys in wins with 280, and his purse earnings of $5.05 million are a career best. In 2014, when Hernandez finished 11th in the nation in wins with 235, he surpassed $4 million in earnings for the first time. Riding first call for trainer Karl Broberg at Delta Downs in the 2014-15 season and at Evangeline Downs the last two seasons paid off for Hernandez. Broberg, who dominated the trainers’ races at those tracks in recent years, said he turned to Hernandez when Diego Saenz was injured during the Evangeline Downs meet in July 2014. Hernandez “does everything right,’’ Broberg said. “He has [horses] in the right position. He was going to Fair Grounds last year, but I begged and pleaded for him to go to Delta one more year.’’ Hernandez won the Delta Downs riding title in 2014-15, winning 120 races from 530 mounts. This year at Evangeline Downs, where he was the leading rider for the second consecutive year, he won with 175 of 575 mounts, more than doubling the victory total of runner-up Saenz. After that meet, Hernandez headed to Churchill Downs for the September meet, but a broken collarbone suffered in a spill cut short his move into higher-level competition after 10 rides. Hernandez isn’t a total newcomer to Fair Grounds. Besides riding ship-in horses from Delta Downs over the years, he was based here in the 2012-13 season, winning 22 races from 322 mounts. He and his agent, Anthony Martin, are expecting much better results this season. “He’s great to work for, a very talented rider, young, great attitude,” Martin said. “There’s nothing you can’t tell him. I think he’s got a good future.’’ Hernandez has a patient style more suited to Fair Grounds, known for its daunting, 1,346-foot-long stretch, than Delta Downs, a bullring with a 660-foot stretch. “I like it a lot more here,’’ he said. “You can actually ride a race here. At Delta, you have to move earlier than you want.’’ Stall, who has supported Hernandez for a few years, put him on his first Louisiana Derby mount, Sunbean, in 2013. “He’s one of those kids whose natural way of riding is to get them to settle and finish,’’ Stall said. “No one ever told him to do it.’’ Hernandez grew up in a riding family. His father, retired jockey Brian Hernandez Sr., rode in Louisiana for more than 25 years. “He’d bring me back after the races, tell me what I did wrong or did a good job,’’ Colby said. Older brother Brian Hernandez Jr. is an established jockey on the Fair Grounds/Kentucky circuit, and younger sister Courtney Hernandez recently ended a short riding career to start a family. Brian Hernandez Jr. said Colby has the talent to succeed in higher-caliber racing. “He just needs the support and the horses,’’ Brian Jr. said. “If he wants to do it, he needs to stick it out. That’s the thing with young riders. If they don’t have instant success, they want to go back to being a big fish in a small pond. No matter where you go, it’s going to take time.’’