ON THE KINNICKINNIC RIVER — Matt Shipp smacked the back of his neck.

“More mayflies coming out,” he said, examining the mush that moments ago alighted on his flesh. “And some of them are really big.”

Mayflies — small and big — swarmed our heads while at least two types of caddis flies skimmed the surface. Trout were going bonkers, sipping, slapping and splashing the water in what would be a classic feeding frenzy on the Lower Kinni, a river known for its bug production. Also aloft, and perhaps on the water, were hordes of other insects I wasn’t going to bother trying to identify.

We weren’t trying to match the hatch(es). Our arsenal of flies consisted of perhaps five patterns, none of which looked particularly like a Hendrickson or elk hair caddis.

Shipp stood less than 20 yards from me, dead drifting his fly just under the surface as the river sped toward a riffle that widened into a pool. He had brought several fish to hand already.

I stood at the riffle, studying the caddis flies that skittered across the surface, often ignoring the current. I gave my 11-foot rod a series of subtle jerks, just enough for the ridiculously thin and limber tip to flex and transmit the energy to the line, to make the fly depart from its natural drift and jump a few inches before landing again, just like the real bugs.

Skitter. Drift. Skitter-skitter. Splash.

A trout was on. That wire-thin rod tip sensed, it seemed, every flex of every muscle of 8-inch brook trout now pulsing below the water. And every pulse was transmitted back to my hand that gripped the rod almost as delicately as a conductor holds his baton. After a brief tussle, I raised the rod high, bringing the fish toward me until I could slide the net under it.

In a moment, the fish was unhooked, I flicked the rod back toward the riffle, and my fly was in the zone again, ready to be skittered, ready for another trout.

This was fishing unlike any I’ve experienced before.

In addition to our Spartan selection of flies, we lacked other equipment, such as much more line than the length of our rods.

And we lacked reels.

Welcome to tenkara fishing.

A traditional Japanese practice that likely predates what we think of as fly fishing, tenkara involves a rod, line and a fly. And fish.

In that elegance that is characteristic of some Japanese disciplines, tenkara is fishing in its simplest, most essential form.

It’s been catching on in America for several years, and now it’s made its way to the Upper Midwest. The trend began in earnest in 2009 when Tenkara USA was founded on the west coast. Today, a few stores, including Kinni Creek Lodge’s fly shop in River Falls, Wis., stock the rods, and one Wisconsin company, Badger Tenkara, produces its own line of rods and accessories.

To the uninitiated, tenkara (pronounced “ten-KAHD-ah” in Japanese but “ten-CAR-uh” by casual Americans) might sound like cane pole fishing. Sure, the checklist of gear is the same, but the experience is far different. And there’s no way my modern cane pole can do what Shipp’s featherweight tenkara rods can.

All tenkara rods are telescopic, so breakdown and transport is alarmingly simple.

Flies are flung with what are essentially roll casts. One significant variation to a traditional fly fishing presentation is that the rod is kept angled upward at the finish of the cast so that the fly and perhaps the tippet — but never the heavier line — hit the water first.

In fact, little other than the fly ever touches the water. Two advantages to this, which I noticed right away as Shipp introduced me to tenkara earlier this month:

First, there is no drag in the line, no need to mend or worry about currents of different speeds. You follow the fly with your rod, and it’s a true, blissfully natural drift.

Second, no line smacking the water at every cast; the presentation is as delicate as a baetis laying her eggs. Shipp and I worked the same patch of water for several hours as the light faded. Once positioned in the current, we barely had to move. And the trout forgot we were there, rising nearly between our legs at times.

Of course, the lack of reel could spell trouble with a big fish on, and the limit of how far you can cast is immediately apparent. In large rivers, this, along with strong winds, are weaknesses in the tenkara approach. But in the small confines of driftless streams of southeast Minnesota and southwest Wisconsin, it’s not a problem. It wasn’t for Shipp and me.

We caught at least eight fish and missed easily that many again. It was steady action, but not non-stop. Shipp and I speculated about how an entomologist-angler with a fly box ready to match any hatch might have fared.

“I bet he would do great,” Shipp said. “But I don’t know if he’d be able to fish the hole all evening. He’d always be trying to cast farther, smacking the water all the time.”

Then he added: “Of course, there’s nothing stopping us from tying on those flies. I just didn’t want to bother bringing them.”

In fact, Shipp himself has plenty of those flies. An accomplished fly tyer, his classic patterns have been sold by Kinni Creek and Lund’s Fly Shop in River Falls, where he lives with his wife and three kids. An occasional fly fishing guide — tenkarawaters@gmail.com — he took up tenkara in 2012 and said it’s become his preferred method for fishing the Kinni.

When I met him at his house in River Falls, he was sitting on the front steps, tying a fly, armed with little more than a small wooden box with a few threads.

Kebari, as tenkara flies are called, consist of a few basic patterns of wet flies intended to be versatile. You match the action of the flies, not the flies themselves, to fool the fish in tenkara fishing. Owing to its roots as a commercial fishing enterprise in Japan’s mountain, the flies aren’t intended to be works of art, and Shipp said he finds it refreshing that his ties often contain threads askew.

As with any trend with a sense of the exotic, tenkara has developed some fanatical followers — and the accompanying backlash. Some fly fishing purists have called tenkara “dapping” and some tenkara purists have alleged those who tie an Adams to a tenkara rod are committing some infraction as well.

Thankfully, where we live, trout fishing is strikingly egalitarian, and all methods — spinning and live bait included — are legal, and generally accepted. (The state of Washington is in the process of rewriting its regulations to allow tenkara fishing on fly-fishing only waters.)

Shipp seemed like a good tour guide for my first tenkara experience: devoted but not a purist.

“Is tenkara fly fishing?” he said at one point. “I don’t know. I know it’s fishing, and it’s fun.”

I agree.

Not only was it fun and actually relaxing, it was tangle-free, 100 percent. I have no doubt — none — that if I had brought my 5-weight with my rhythmically questionable casts, I would have been in trees or grasses at least a few times, tempted by undercut banks I would have tried to reach with more line, rather than proper stealth, which tenkara demands.

Legendary fly fisherman Lefty Kreh has called tenkara a “fad,” and he might be right. It’s certainly no threat to Orvis at the moment.

But I know this: In tenkara, rods can be bought for under $200, reels are irrelevant, insect expertise is unnecessary, and snarls of line are a rarity. If I were to do it all again, to start trying to trick trout with flies on small streams, I’d start with tenkara.

Dave Orrick can be reached at 651-228-5512. Follow him at twitter.com/OutdoorsNow.