Paint it Orange: Keep Important Boating and Fishing Gear in Order

I don’t use much spray paint these days, but when I do, it’s for fishing—as a way to seriously mark key items on the boat or trailer. For example:

Ever trailered the boat down the street and left your trailer padlock on the trailer tongue? Lock and trailer are the same gray color, and that lock will likely end up a block down the street before falling off (been there, done that). Paint it fluorescent orange and that lock will last for years. Mine certainly has.

Paint the key to the trailer lock that same fluorescent orange and there will be no fumbling with different keys when the coast is calling. It will show up in your hand in poor lighting, even pre-sunrise before leaving the house. At the boat ramp, that glowing orange lock may deter trailer thieves from a distance. They’ll veer off at 30 feet and try a different trailer.

On the boat when action is fast and furious, people yelling and fish splashing, finding the bait knife quickly is essential; not finding it can be frustrating. When anglers are clamoring for more cut bait and the knife is nowhere to be found, what’s a fella to do? If painted fluorescent orange, that knife will show up anywhere.

What about drain plugs on jonboats or other small skiffs? If you take on water from a wave or heavy rain accumulation and want to drain the boat while running, pull the drain plug. And then what if you can’t find it among the clutter? Happens. Spray that metal plug handle bright orange every few months, and it will show up quick when you need it. Same for the drain plug you pull out of a boat after loading at the end of the day; brighten it up so it’s less likely to get lost.

The same principle applies to the tilt-up latch on my Yamaha outboard. It’s a dull blue/gray, blending in and hard to spot in certain light conditions. I’m often stooping over and groping for it. With numerous limestone outcroppings underwater along my stretch of the Gulf coast, it’s vital to run with the motor set to tilt up during any sort of impact with hard objects. However, it’s often easy to forget during a busy morning. My remedy was to cut a hole in light cardboard to match the latch, and spray the latch with bright orange paint. The cardboard prevents paint from getting on other motor parts. That bright orange latch is a visual reminder, making it easier to spot among surrounding motor parts.

Lastly, I spray paint a small buoy to mark fish, while drifting a wide expanse of coastal water, most often when trout fishing because they’re so scattered. If we connect with two or three solid trout in a small area, we’ll toss out a buoy marking that spot the old-fashioned way, without having electronics on board. This technique dates back to drifting Rankin Lake near Flamingo when I was a kid quite a few decades ago.

The buoys I now use are made with repurposed 28-ounce Gatorade bottles—the kind with the middle section indented, which holds line wrappings without unraveling. I keep those marker buoys small, to minimize unwanted attention from passing boats. Fluorescent orange might even be too colorful in areas with considerable boat traffic. We’ve actually lost several non-orange buoys by drifting too far because of steady action, up to a mile, before returning upwind to search and retrieve.

In a lightly-fished area, perhaps on weekdays (not Saturday mornings) I use fluorescent orange paint on my buoys to set up repeat drifts 30 yards either side of the buoy, perpendicular to the wind. That glowing orange also aids in quick buoy recovery when it’s time to leave, instead of wasting time searching. In the past, flat orange paint on the buoy was okay, but fluorescent orange seemed three times brighter or easier to spot on the horizon. Apparently, fluorescent colors have special properties that make them show up at a relatively great distance, even in low light.

---

• This article was featured in the June 2025 issue of Florida Sportsman magazine. Click to subscribe

---