It depends on your needs and goals which you really need to explain if you want good advice.
Is the boat a keeper?
Do you care how it looks or just how it performs?
What's the intended use, salt, marsh, rocky rivers, resevoirs?
What type of fishing?
You can paint over the existing and it may come off. You can strip the whole thing with aircraft stripper in a weekend under a shade tree and repaint it. You can strip it and apply Steelflex to seal and protect it as well.
Point is better descriptions get better answers.
Jamie