Its hard to get into as it requires a great deal more skill than most wheeled flying apart from ag and is quite easy to get it wrong. It requires good reading of situations such as wind direction and the ability to adapt and rise to situations. Not all pilots adapt to this kind of extremely practical flying and allot just are not good enough at flying correct attitudes etc.
Also on floats you tend to work harder in terms of cleaning and looking after equipment and once you land it is far from over, infact on some days its just starting.
To answer your questions now I have quite a bit of rough open water experience and I am not often out of work in Australia. I really enjoy it and have found the guys in the float world are often not driven by the same hankering for big shiny jets. Because of this they are more fun to be around as they generally are doing what they want not what they feel is correct for there career.
For me there is no regrets to becoming a float driver and infact I have found in other non float jobs it has helped me, allot of people in aviation recognise that if you have rough water float time you can fly!
