For pond or small water fishing consider painting the bottom in a broken pattern (camo). Paint in some limbs and patches/blotches that break up the sillioute of the bottom. Stealth is important in small water fishing.
Could you Rhino Line it like a truck bed?
I've given serious thought to Eric's idea of a camo pattern on the bottom. I'm just not sure how effective it would be, as I usually fish tens of feet away from where the fish actually might be. This boat mostly gets used in 40-500 foot lakes, and in saltwater backwaters.
And then, in my inflated mind, I believe that fish greatly fear any sighting of me. EWEST, DD, and many of the other Pond Boss members know how the fish scatter and will not hit on anything when I throw my line in the water.
I've used the Rhino truck bed coating on several projects. I have been extremely impressed with it.
I applied it inside my tractor loader bucket a couple of years ago. It just doesn't peel or scrape off.
I have about a 40 year old Old Towne canoe that I bought about 30 years ago from an outfitter after they could no longer use it. It had a rip in the kevlar exterior near the stern. I tried lots of things to fix it, including Old Towne's stern repair kit. None of them really did the job. About two years ago I bought a body repair kit and more Rhino truck bed coating. I won't go into all of the things I did to patch this canoe, but it included several applications of Bondo, some pretty sticky metallic body screen, some very short but extremely aggressive screws with large flat heads, more Bondo, fiberglass, Rhino, more fiberglass, , , It has held over several river trips with rapids.
As I mentioned above, I may not get to properly repaint the boat this summer. But, I think I may just put it upside down in the driveway in the next few days, clean it with one of the cleaners mentioned in posts above, and apply a few coats of Rhino on the bottom.
Lynda (my wife) says I should let the main part of the hull look the way it does. It is so ugly, nobody would want to steal it.
That kind of goes with Dave Davidson's comment above.
Maybe they are right. But, I would at least like the bottom, and the interior looking a little better.
