Your two cents. Frontier12 v slayer12 v cuda

Make sure you demo and don't be afraid to roll it over and self rescue. Also make sure you look at ff and transducer placement options. Sit in the boat and make sure to visualize how you fish, what side you land fish on.  Figure out where you would put your gear and what gear you may need to purchase or install. 

I like the Cuda 14, the seat is awesome. CCK has 3 demos and a new sand colored for $999. Good luck and congrats.

Headwaters kayak is Dans shop in Lodi, he's got a lot of demo boats to try and play with.
However
Headwaters Adventure Co. is owned by dans parents and is in Redding (about 2hrs north of Sac) I work for Dans parents in Redding and we're holding a Jackson demo day with all the Jackson Kayaks and some skills building with a phenomenal and accomplished paddler named Sean Morley. We will also have some Kokatat dry suits to play with. Our demo was at Whiskeytown lake but due to gov shut down its closed. So we looked at Shasta lake but today signs were posted while I was out fishing that it is also shut down, or at least the facilities are. We'll finalize our plans tomorrow morning on what's going on and I'll post it up ASAP.

Good advice shooter, thanks. Honestly, that's all I've been doing for the last month, looking at reviews and daydreaming. 

Was able to get over to headwaters this afternoon. What a store! Amazing how much wood you can get from plastic. 

Talked with Jeff, cool guy, very helpful.  Discovered that the nucanoe makes a great beer barge ( and that ain't nothing), but it's not what I need. Think I'm getting the cuda 14, black widow coloring. Frickin sweet. Just gotta give it a test run Saturday and I'll be golden.