She was intrigued by the pictures I had showed her of her brother and I pontooning
down the Bighorn from earlier this year and she wanted to know if we could spend the day pontooning down one of the local rivers. After some scouting (and boy
did the aerial map feature of Google and MSN maps come in handy for finding access points!) I picked a 6.5 mile float on the Rum River about 12 miles North of
the house to spend a lazy Friday floating with my daughter.
Now my daughter isn't a big angler but she will go out with me once or twice a year, but she didn't want to mess around with trying to fish on her
first pontooning trip. She voiced no objections when I asked if she minded if I brought a rod along, so I threw in the Sceptre 7' 3/4wt that I had
converted to a 4-pc configuration.... just in case. The Rum is known as a good little small mouth stream and is a slow meandering stream with a current
running about 1.5 mph.
We spent the first 45 minutes or so teaching her how to row, she had never rowed a boat before and what seemed perfectly natural to me was causing her a great
deal of frustration initially, but after a while she caught on and we were drifting along quite peacefully. So for the next hour and a half we drifted along
together catching up on life at UW Madison and her plans for the future, she'll be graduating next May!
We were about 2.5 hours into our 4 - 5 hour float and I casually asked if she would mind if I fished for a little bit, I was anxious to tryout the Sceptre for
the first time. So I strung up the rod as we drifted and chatted then dropped it into the rod holder on the front of my toon to search my flybox for the
perfect fly to entice some of the Crappie or Northern Pike that were in season, as small mouth season was still a week away. 
Well apparently when I dropped the rod into the rod holder the lip of the holder caught the edge of the slide band on the reel seat just enough to loosen it up
because when I picked up the rod to make my very first on-stream cast with it my Heddon 310 reel immediately tumbled into the river! 
I was dumbfounded!
I immediately stuck the rod back in the holder and started pulling on the line as fast as I could hoping to pull the reel back in. I was soon 150' down
stream of where the reel had fallen in and well into the backing and still pulling in line frantically! A couple more minutes and I got to the end of the
backing ..... BUT THE REEL IS SNAGGED ON THE BOTTOM! So as I'm holding the backing in one hand trying to figure out how to get back up to the point where
the reel fell off when I notice that the entire fly line drifting down stream behind me has now straightened out and looked up in horror as the rod still
sitting in the rod holder is now starting to BEND OVER DEEPLY AND SNAP - the top 10" of the
rod are gone in the blink of an eye! 
I hadn't even gotten a chance to cast a fly on the water with it! 
After the shock and heart break of watching my new rod break I was able to compose myself enough to row upstream of where the reel went in and pull it free. I
THEN had to contend with a massive tangle of the entire flyline and backing drapped back and forth over the pontoon pockets, oars and oar locks. It took a
half hour to untangle the line to the point I could start reeling in back in, meanwhile I've drifted into a low hanging tree, knocked my hat off, almost
lost my perscription sunglasses and threatening to finish off what's left of the Sceptre!
All in all I had a thoroughly enjoyable day with my daughter and wouldn't have traded the time spent with her for anything! Breaking the rod was a bit
painful, but it can be replaced, the time together can't.
Tight Lines & no more SLIDING BAND reel seats on the TOON!
Mark
