Thanks for the insight, Chieftain and 64osby. You've convinced me. I will keep my eye out for aluminum. I watched a youtube series by a guy who bought a beautiful fiberglass boat and soon learned that the floor and stringers were completely shot. Took him all winter of working every weekend and quite a few nights to fix. If you're having trouble sleeping, watch it. He's a fairly entertaining guy at least.
I live in the Finger Lakes region of NY state, and venture to the Adirondacks often. Some of the Adirondack lakes are small and can have rocky shores and what not. Fiberglass does seem risky when you don't know exactly what's under you. I mean, I know you can't just run an aluminum boat up on sharp rocks at high speed and expect to stay floating, but they do seem to be more forgiving of small errors.
Right now we are using a 17' Smoker Craft aluminum fishing boat that my girlfriend's father gave her. I'm actually not sure of the year, but early 80's with original 28hp Johnson. The boat and motor are awesome- it sat in his barn for 10 or 15 years and we had it running within an hour of pulling it out this past fall. New tires on the trailer, fixed a faulty neutral start switch, new battery, and it started up. I'm actually going to take the carb off the motor this afternoon because it needs to be rebuilt.