espite the enormous contribution he made to salmon fishing, A.H.E. Wood remains a shadowy figure. His writing are confined to a few letters and articles in the fishing press of the day, a chapter in a book called "Fisherman's Pie" edited by Holland in 1926, and various accounts of his technique by third parties. The best of these are found in Crossley's "The Floating Line for Salmon and Sea-Trout" (1939), and of course, Jock Scott's incomparable "Greased Line Fishing for Salmon," published in 1935. Beyond that, we know very little, beyond the fact that made his discoveries in 1903, and spent the remainder of his life refining them.

Wood stood out from British salmon fishermen of the day for three reasons. First, he fished a floating line, using his "greased line" technique; second, he used a "short" rod of only twelve feet (as a matter of fact, Wood did so chiefly because he found difficulty using a double-handed rod); and third, his flies were reductionist patterns, a mere wisp of fur and feather on the hook, and on occasion, just the hook itself. News of the success of his method brought fishermen to Cairnton from all over the world, who visited Wood in 1925, and rose several salmon on a dry fly, but failed to land one.

Before Wood, salmon lines sank. They might have floated for a while at the beginning of the day, but silk lines rapidly took on water and once the line was soaked the fly could not be fished near the surface except in fast streams. Wood emulated dry fly fishermen's treatment of their lines, and the fact that his line floated was part of, but not the entire secret of, his greased line technique.

Until Wood, few salmon fishers other than Kelson had devoted much thought to the way the fly ‘swam’. That was to change. Wood was extremely innovative, taking mending to the extreme, as part of a system of fly fishing that demanded the presentation of the fly to the fish "sidling past him and floating downstream" like a dead leaf. Wood regarded any pull on the fly by the action of the stream on the line as fatal, and would mend the cast obsessively to achieve the effect. According to Wood, the fly should swim diagonally down and across the stream, just awash:

...in a natural manner; wobbling, rising and falling with the play of the eddies exactly as would an insect, or a little fish which was in trouble.

Wood fished the greased-line by preference, even in Spring, and only turned to the sunk line when his own method had failed. He understood the effect of temperature on salmon taking, used it to decide on hook size, and described the effect of air that is colder than the water in putting salmon off the take. A remarkable man.