Dozens of colorful fish lie in wait for another cast of a fishing line. Anglers twist their bodies left and right as they try hook One of the anglers cheers as their hook snags a brightly colored fish. He quickly reels it in, and it doesn’t put up a fight. The student unhooks it and holds up the lime green plastic fish.
Precinct 4 naturalist Bobby Martin is teaching a group of the basics of fishing with a game as part of a “Know Your Fish” lesson, which he teaches regularly.
These lessons began by accident. Martin was teaching a group of kids when a volunteer with The Arc of Katy, an organization that provides programs and services to those with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), approached him to ask if he could teach the program to its members as well.
“Once I finished the first program, I worked with them on a second program to give [those with IDDs] the attention they deserve,” Martin said. “It's just great. There's no other way of explaining it except that these guys have absolutely so much fun. I know when they go home that's all they talk about.”
He calls these groups his ‘talented ones.’
“I just don’t like the phrase ‘special needs’ – I never have. I call them talented,” Martin said. "If you take a child with ‘special needs,’ and you talk to them, and you use the word ‘special needs,’ they feel like they’ve been downgraded. That’s not what we’re here for. We’re here for the constituents of Harris County Precinct 4 to make their lives better. If we can change a kid’s life by just a tiny little program, then my job has been fulfilled.”
Martin has been with Precinct 4 for more than 24 years, and he has been a Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Certified Angler Education Instructor for 22 of those years. Fishing has always been a large part of his life, and says he is lucky to be able to share it with the groups he teaches.
“I started fishing at a very young age,” Martin said. “I love fishing – I love the passion. Whether it’s catching a fish, teaching someone to fish, or the excitement that I get out of watching a kid smile the first time they reel in a fish – you just can’t beat that.”
Martin’s main role acreating and teaching multiple fishing programs a week to children, teens, and adults. Each of these classes are designed to not only teach the basics of fishing, but also to share his love of the sport with the students.
,” Martin said. “But when you know how to fish, and you know how to hold a fish, and you know what lures to use fish, it opens the world up to fishing.”
Martin knows that even teaching people the basics of how to fish (like with a dozen colorful plastic fish) does not just introduce them to a new skill or hobby – it has the potential to change their day or life for the better.
“We never know what could be going on behind closed doors,” Martin said. “Someone could be coming in from just having a bad day, and if we could take just a little bit of our time to change the direction of the path of a child’s outcome – it's just phenomenal."