Thank you all very much for your great feedback. I'm a little embarrassed that I didn't look in the archives in the first place. There was tons of good info there. However, after reading through all that my head was spinning for two days! A friend of mine loves his clackacraft, but it seems like most of you prefer alum. Would it be safe to say as a novice rower I could do less damage to an aluminum boat. And would a UMHW bottom kind of be the best of both worlds? Do the tracking benefits of alum diminish with the bottom coating? Also if I fish alone a lot I might want better tracking in order to not have to anchor up as often?