OK, the inaugural FLW Fantasy Fishing has come and gone, and all I have to say is: exacta, exacta, exacta. That’s what Lake Toho player Christopher Toring hit to become fantasy sport’s first $100,000 champion.

Toring landed three anglers in the top 10 – Carl Svebek, Pat Fisher and Randy Hadden – but the key was that he picked each of them in exactly the right spot: Svebek in second, Fisher seventh and Hadden 10th. That’s the difference, folks – a $100,000 difference.

For instance, take Toring’s Randy Hadden pick. Hadden (a huge dark-horse pick if there ever was one) earned Toring 191 points for finishing 10th, then another 500 points for making the top 10 plus another 750 points for hitting the exacta. Total: 1,441 points for a single pick.

Compare that to a hypothetical alternative: If Toring had picked Koby Kreiger instead of Randy Hadden – Kreiger finished 11th, just 12 ounces out of the cut and one place behind Hadden – he would have earned a total of 190 points for that pick. That’s it. No top-10 points, no exacta points.

That’s a difference of 1,251 fewer points, and that would have placed Toring well down the winners’ list in 61st place with 3,961 points. As it was with Hadden on his side, he won with 5,212.

Looked at another way, say Toring had picked Hadden ninth instead of 10th. He would have lost those 750 points for the exacta. As it turned out, Toring beat second-place Wesley Story by only 148 points.

Bottom line: Work on hitting those exactas, fantasy players, by whatever means necessary. They’re worth their weight in gold.