Painting a duck boat?

So I have a few questions for you boat guys. Tomorrow I am obtaining a 14 ft v nose aluminum John boat and motors from a family member. It's an older boat and has the three bench seats inside. My question is what paint brands and colors do you all prefer for painting your duck boats. I've seen photos of a number of your boats on here that look great. I'd like to do the same. Of course everyone seems to have flat bottom or modified v hulls though. Anyone hunt from a v hull John?

I was looking at the parker duck boat paints on their website but don't know if it's good stuff or not, or if there is anything reasonably priced that is better. The parker paints seem to get good reviews on cabelas website. I would also like to camo the boat as well. I've seen two ways. To paint the boat a solid green color first then use stencils to add Browns etc. or to paint it brown first and to use natural vegetation and to shadow in the greens, blacks and darker colors! Do y'all have any preferences. One way easier than the other? Or look better?

Also do you know of an online retailer that has the best prices for boat paints? Cabelas seems much higher than strait from parker! Not sure if a gallon is enough for my base coat both inside and out of the boat.

I read about acid etching the hull first before priming and painting. What do I use for this? Vinegar?

Any tips or tricks y'all have learned would be greatly appreciated. I know it's kind of late to finish up by duck season opener, but I'll be hunting mostly with my canoe anyways.

Thanks in advance for any info or links to other discussions on this y'all may have as well.

Hope it's a great season for you all.

I just painted mine in the last couple of weeks. The first thing I did was cleaned the hull and painted the entire boat with self-etching primer. Then I painted the base coat using Rustoleum Camo Paints. Then I painted the patterns using the same type paints using the other colors. I did get a bad batch of OD paint. I called Rustoleum and they refunded the price.

I got all of my patterns online. I found them and downloaded the patterns. My wife has a vinyl cutting machine and she was able to cut out templates for me to use as stencils. I used these to put the patterns on in layers.

Parker has a good product, my father painted his V-hull aluminum boat about 10 yrs ago. It still looks good.

As far as color patterns... I think you need to consider your hunting environment. I was going to emulate some mossy oak patterns, but I couldn't pull it off and make it look as good.

I was going to paint an OD base coat, but after the incident with the bad cans of OD I went with a Khaki base. Which I think turned out better because most of the area where I will be will have dead grasses so the khaki would blend in better. I used black and brown for the trees. And then I used OD and Khaki for the reeds and cattails. The floor of the boat is multi-layered with black on bottom, then khaki swirls, and then a heavy top coating of OD. This matches the water that the boat will be in. I also painted the inside of the boat to match the outside.

Rustoleum or krylon works just fine. Just sand down any old paint then go ahead with your pattern

Bull279 thanks for the info! I forgot to mention I'd like to buy a gallon of paint for my base coat since I have a paint sprayer. Does that rustoleum seem like it will last a long time? I'd like to not have to repaint every few years as well

No problem. As far as lasting... you'll have to ask me in a couple of years.
It seems like it should do well for its use. I have a little 10ft flat-bottom john boat and I used 3 cans for the exterior base coat. I used maybe 2 for the inside. Once i used the self-etching primer ( I got it at NAPA) the paint stuck to it with no problem. The primer had a nice dark green color to it, looks like the color Lowe John boats come from the factory with.

I have a paint spray, but was kind of lazy and didn't feel like cleaning it after the fact.

Link to thread with my Duck Boat thread