questions like yours always make me curious about boats I know nothing about, so I took a quick look at them on the Wen site.

a reasonable measure of performance is the length to width ratio, which should really be waterline length to waterline width - hard to get those exact numbers, but from what Wen had, I came up wtih 6.36 for the Escape and 5.74 for theSpirit II - the higher the ratio, the faster the boat should be.

The difference is really that the Spirit II is a better all around boat compared to the escape being a better tripping boat, more or less. So its comparing a "jack of all trads" against a more specialized model.

You just need to decide which you want - or send me a check for $25 and I'll decide for you ?  Probably the Spirit II would make a better fishing platform, as its wider for its length, but I'd think either boat would be ok.  

If you buy one and it turns out to be not what you really wanted, sell it and buy the other - its not like you can't change your mind later.