Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame: Taking a big chance earned Jack Hains fishing’s biggest win

Note: This is the fourth story in a series on the 2018 inductees to the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame. Induction ceremonies are June 30 in Natchitoches. Click here to learn more.

By Raymond Partsch III
Written for the LSWA

Jack Hains became Louisiana’s first Bassmaster Classic champion by taking a gamble.

Hains entered the final day of the 1975 Classic in Currituck Sound, North Carolina in fifth place on the leaderboard.

If the crop duster from Rayne was going to reel in the most prestigious title and largest purse in all of professional fishing, he was going to have to take a big chance on the last day of the three-day competition — a day which featured frigid 40-mph winds and rough swells.

“The conditions were pretty horrific that morning but the fact of the matter the wind was diminishing,” Hains remembered. “Leaving the protective cove that morning the wind wasn’t as bad but the bigger problem was the tide and wind had pushed the water from the sound. It was much shallower than the day before so immediately that was my dilemma. I went to an area that had been good for me the day before but it was dry so I went to another area where there was an old duck blind which I figured would have some fish.”

The then-25-year-old rookie caught a few decent fish around the blind, but it wasn’t going to be nearly enough to win the tournament so he decided to roll the dice.

“My other spot was across the big choppy water,” recalled Hains, who used seven crankbaits by famed wildlife illustrator and angler Cliff Soward. “I had to go out where it was going to be rough. It took a little while but I finally got around the bad water and it looked like I had a straight shot to my spot. The water was calm and I was just thinking ‘this is it.’ ”

It wasn’t, though.

The motor in his flat-bottom bass boat had started hitting the bottom and pretty soon it shuddered to a stop. Hains had unknowingly hit a sandbar and was now less than 100 yards away from a pier he had successfully fished during the practice rounds days earlier. He had no choice but to strip down, get out of his boat and push it back the 100 to 150 yards it had traveled through the sandy water.

“It wasn’t easy but I was 25 years old at the time, so what else was I going to do?” laughed Hains.

He got back in his boat, put on a snowmobile suit to stay warm, and then cranked up his motor and headed over to that pier. Even with the low tide, Hains still managed to boat three more fish, which proved big at the final weigh-in.

Hains would catch a total of 18 fish (weighing 45 pounds and 4 ounces) for the tournament to defeat 29 other anglers, including future longtime ESPN host Jimmy Houston, to become the first Louisiana fisherman to win a Bassmaster Classic.

“I remember thinking Jack Hains won the Bassmaster Classic,” said 2015 Distinguished Service Award winner Glenn Quebedeaux. “He was one of members of our Rice City Bass Club in Crowley which we started like four years earlier. Like me, he was one of the younger members.

“We had a bunch of older, local legends in our club,” said Quebedeaux, “and Jack, who was just getting into bass and tournament fishing, was like me — one of the most unlikely candidates to go on to win a Classic.

“But he worked hard at the sport, gobbled up all the knowledge he could from the older guys, and bam, he won the Classic.”

Hains would go on to qualify for seven more Bassmaster Classic tournaments, fished on the Walmart Fishing League Worldwide Tour, competed in 152 career tournaments, finished in the Top 10 a total of 24 times, finished in the Top 20 a total of 35 times and earned more than $300,000 in prize winnings.

It only seems fitting Hains would be enshrined among the state’s sporting greats, and only the third outdoorsman to be enshrined following Grits Gresham and Dr. L.J. Mayeux, when the 2018 Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame class is inducted Saturday, June 30, at the Natchitoches Events Center.

“It is extremely humbling to say the least,” Hains said. “I am excited but I question being selected because of all the great people in the hall. I am humbled by the honor.”

Hains grew up in Rayne and fell in love with fishing by catching bream and bass in the pond on the family’s farm.

“I started out fishing and I used whatever they would bite on,” Hains said. “I always had a desire to catch those bass though. They were the king of the pond and I wanted to catch all those I could.”

But before concentrating on bass fishing, Hains dreamed of one day becoming a king on the diamond.

He grew up playing multiple sports (football, basketball, track) at Rayne High, but his passion was baseball.

Baseball is what Hains wanted to do with his life.

“To be honest if I had a choice of what I wanted to be,” said Hains, who was a high school teammate of fellow 2018 inductee Lewis Cook, “I would have been the starting catcher for the New York Yankees. I was going to take Yogi Berra’s spot.”

A career on the diamond, though, was not in the cards for Hains, and neither was life as a college student. After graduating from Rayne in 1967, he attended both McNeese State University and then University of Southwestern Louisiana (now known as UL Lafayette) to study agriculture but dropped out of both schools.

Hains’ desire to soar above the fields of Acadia Parish proved to be far stronger than anything he was doing in a classroom.

“I just wanted to go fly airplanes more,” said Hains, who got his pilot’s license at age 18 and would fly as a crop duster for his father. “I loved flying. It came so natural to me. You know it was like if you ever had bought a suit and you try it on and it fits perfectly? Flying planes was like that for me.”

It was during this time Hains began to spend more and more of his down time with a rod and reel in his hand.

“There were some people in Rayne that had bought some property over at Toledo Bend and were selling lots,” Hains remembered. “That was around 1971 and my daddy at the time decided he wanted a lot and to put a trailer on it.

“As a crop duster I would have a lot of off time in the fall and the early spring,” Hains said. “So, I spent a lot of time at the camp.”

Hains, who credits the late Theo “Topot” Morrow of Crowley for mentoring him as a bass angler, began fishing local and regional tournaments in 1971 and then eventually began fishing B.A.S.S. sanctioned events in 1975 — the year he won the Bassmaster Classic.

Hains though kept crop dusting when he wasn’t fishing all the way up until 1980.

Part of it was because he enjoyed flying but the other part was in those days — the payouts were not enormous. The champion of the Classic now collects a check of $300,000. Hains’ winnings in 1975 were $15,950.

“It wasn’t nowhere what it is these days,” Hains said. “Don’t get me wrong that check was big back then but the Classic was still new.”

Hains briefly left the world of competitive fishing in 1978 (to pursue business interests in the oil field) but still remained an avid angler and fishing guide. As the oil crunch of the 1980’s put many people out of work, Hains returned to competitive fishing in 1982 as he won the Southeast Texas Oilman’s Bass Classic on Toledo Bend.

“The oil field had gone down the tubes shortly after that tournament,” Hains said. “So I made a few phone calls and got back to fishing tournaments again.”

“When I found out the 1975 Bassmaster Classic champion lived in Rayne, it was a no-brainer to arrange a bass fishing trip with him for a feature story for readers of The Daily Iberian,” said The Daily Iberian’s longtime outdoors writer Don Shoopman, who has written about The Sportsman’s Paradise since 1976.

“We fished Lake Dauterive-Fausse Pointe. It was his first time ever on the lake but he showed why he was a Classic champion,” he said. “He caught bass using both a spinning rig and a bait casting rig. I learned a lot. I still look at the photo of him with a bass caught in the ‘borrow pit canal’ between what is now Lake Fausse Pointe State Park and Lake Dauterive.”

Hains would continue to fish professionally for the next two decades before retiring from the sport in the early 2000’s. He never won another Classic but his legacy as the first angler from Louisiana to claim the sport’s highest honor is intact.

“There was more to my respect for him than fishing,” Shoopman said. “I realized real fast Jack, the man, was as good, as solid, as Jack, the bass fisherman. He was a God-fearing Christian. He was a man of his word and always, always had time to talk. I know that because for about 10-15 years we talked at least once a month about bass fishing at Toledo Bend and, naturally, life.

“I can say I was proud to know Jack before he was a Hall of Famer,” said Shoopman. “ And I’m even prouder now.”

“What he did was inspire a legion of younger guys to get involved in bass fishing in general and tournament fishing in particular and the sport took off,” added Quebedeaux.

These days Hains spends his days serving as the Recreation Director for the Broussard Sports Complex but he still finds plenty of time for a little fishing from time to time and has valuable advice for any up-and-coming pro angler.

“I had been so close to winning other tournaments,” Hains said. “I had it won and the fish comes off. I had it won and my line breaks. It makes you realize that everything has to be perfect. After you fish in a couple of tournaments you learn you have to make the most of every minute you have out there on the water.”