OVERTIME OUTDOORS: Hains, others happy to meet once again

Jack Hains stood up from the folding table where he had finished a succulent supper and acknowledged the crowd of people at a fundraising event for New Iberia bass pro Caleb Sumrall on Thursday evening in rural Iberia Parish.

Calling attention to Hains was Phil Haney, host who was helping Sumrall for a second straight year with unselfish donations from a cross-section of a caring community known as the Teche Area.

For some of the guests, Hains needed no introduction. He rose to the top of the bass fishing totem pole 44 years ago when he won the world championship of bass fishing, the Bassmaster Classic.

Hains, 69, who lives in Crowley, is the former director of the Broussard Sports Complex.

Haney had a chance meeting with Hains one day last October when both returned to Quintana Canal Boat Landing at Cypremort Point from speckled trout fishing trips in Vermilion Bay. They introduced themselves and found they had something else in common, such as bass fishing.

Haney and Hains kept in touch. The local lawyer, retired District Attorney for the 16th Judicial District, invited the state’s first Bassmaster Classic champion to Sumrall’s event on Thursday. The special guest arrived after sunset and walked into the room and into some open arms.

“He got to visit some old friends, like you,” Haney said later.

I first met Hains after moving here from Kansas City, Missouri, in 1976, the year after he won the Bassmaster Classic Championship. Like I’ve said before, it was a no-brainer to write a bass fishing story on Hains as soon as possible following his Classic victory.

We went in his boat to Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe, a lake he had never fished before, and he hooked and boated bass while analyzing the depth, structure and habitat in the bayous and canals like he would a tournament body of water. An old black-and-white photo I have kept for 40-plus years shows him unhooking a nice-sized bass he caught on a soft plastic using a spinning rod in what is known now as the “borrow pit canal.”

We stayed in touch after that and fished together at Toledo Bend, where he moved to be a fishing guide while fishing professionally for the next two decades or so, then moved on to another career at The Twin Silos hunting Club in St. Francisville. We talked by phone at least once a month before he eventually left Many.

During his days at Toledo Bend, Hains also met and befriended other Teche Area bass anglers, two who attended Thursday’s event. It was a heckuva reunion for Danny Bulliard of St. Martinville, who fished five straight days in the early 1990s with Hains on the sprawling border lake shared by Louisiana and Texas, and for Vic Segura of New Iberia, who finished seventh in an Oilman’s tournament at Toledo Bend and unselfishly disclosed his hotspot to Hains, who went the next day to Arnold Bay and slammed the hawgs for a television fishing show hosted by my friend Ron Castille of Lake Charles.

Bulliard, plant manager at Cajun Chef Products LLC in St. Martinville, and Hains met again for the first time in years at Haney’s. After reliving those five days, they discovered they both share a passion for training Labrador retriever dogs, with Hains showing his pride and joy’s photo on his iPhone and Bulliard talking about a lab several years ago that fared well at The Grand, won at the Gueydan Duck Festival and even finished in the Top 30 out of 300 of the nation’s finest retrievers in Stuttgart, Arkansas.

Segura, who can build an aluminum bass boat with the best of ’em, jogged Hains’ memory about that week at the Oilman’s. The New Iberian, who had open heart surgery a little more than a year ago, and Hains talked for a long time and enjoyed every minute.

Hains, a proud but humble member of the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame after being inducted last summer in Natchitoches, captured the fifth annual Bassmaster Classic Championship held Oct. 29-31, 1975, after he and the other 29 Classic qualifiers left New Orleans for the previously undisclosed site on Currituck Sound, North Carolina. The mystery lake was a well-kept secret by Bass Anglers Sportsman Society founder Ray Scott. The anglers were unaware of the destination up to the moment the plane touched down on the runway and a marching band played as a bus pulled into The Carolinian hotel’s parking lot in Nags Head, North Carolina.

The three-day bass tournament with an eight-bass daily limit was plagued by rough seas the second and third days. Hains weathered the storm and rallied on the final day to put six bass weighing 12 pounds, 6 ounces, on the scale to win with 45 pounds, 4 ounces, and collect the Classic’s first-place prize of $15,950.

His Classic victory came at a time when each Classic qualifier was limited to 10 pounds of tackle and fished in identical Ranger bass boats, predecessors of today’s sleek, high-performance fiberglass bass boat that run 70 mph. The Louisiana crop duster-turned-pro angler’s accomplishment can be seen at www.bassmaster.com/video/classic-v. Haney urged people in the crowd to watch that video.

DON SHOOPMAN is the outdoors editor of The Daily Iberian.