Pat Bigelow, Fisheries Biologist
Description
Learn more about fish management in Yellowstone at go.nps.gov/YELLFishMgmt
View definitions & links discussed in this episode at go.nps.gov/WhatWeDoPodcast
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TRANSCRIPT:
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Brett Raeburn From Yellowstone National Park. This is what we do. I'm Brett Raeburn.
Jake Frank And I'm Jake Frank.
Brett Raeburn So I have a question for you to kick this off. What's the, What's the biggest fish that you've ever caught?
Jake Frank The biggest fish I've ever. I was. I used to live in Alaska, and I went halibut fishing, and I caught, like, a 40 pound halibut. That's the. That's the biggest I've ever caught.
Brett Raeburn It's a way bigger than you're gonna say I was expecting.
Jake Frank And that's like, a.
Brett Raeburn Much less impressive size.
Jake Frank Well, that is a, that's a fairly unimpressive halibut. So for that species anyway.
Brett Raeburn Well you've got me beat.
Jake Frank Are you, are you, are you big into fishing.
Brett Raeburn No, about the only fishing I do is when I'm fishing through the freezer for frozen cod that I get from the store. So that's about. That's about as much as I do.
Jake Frank Before you cook it. Do you, like, hold it out in front of you and have someone take a picture so it looks better.
Brett Raeburn I have been known to do that. Follow my Instagram for all that content. Yeah. I also I also want to I want to start off with a trivia question, too, just to see. So you've caught you've got some pretty impressive fish, it sounds like.
Jake Frank Not really.
Brett Raeburn If you turn, you turn over that paper in front of you. There's something on there that I would like you to try to pronounce. You have not seen this before. So this is.
Jake Frank Alright? Let's see. Can I. Can I sound it out? So, Encore, Hankis, Clarki Lewisi?
Pat Bigelow Was that.
Brett Raeburn I was. I was. Well, I actually don't know. This is like one of those trivia questions I don't even know the right answer to. So. Sure you did. Well, all right, That's better than what I would’ve done.
Jake Frank But my guess is that this is the is this the binomial name for the Yellowstone cutthroat trout?
Brett Raeburn Yes, that is the scientific name for the West Slope. Cutthroat trout.
Jake Frank The West Slope. Not that. Not the Yellowstone. Okay.
Brett Raeburn All right. And so today we're going to talk to somebody who probably can pronounce it better than you just did, although I still think that was a pretty good pretty good guess. Our guest today is Pat Bigelow, fisheries biologist who spends a lot of her time on the waters of Yellowstone National Park. So welcome, Pat. How's it going?
Pat Bigelow Hey, Brett and hey Jake. Great. Beautiful day today.
Jake Frank Yeah, it is.
Pat Bigelow And You did pretty good: Oncorhynchus.
Jake Frank Oncorhynchus.
Jake Frank All right. So I was in the wheelhouse.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Brett Raeburn I love the Lewisi Clarki.
Jake Frank Is that how you see it? Or is it a line that that works?
Pat Bigelow Yeah that works, Lewisi Clarkii.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Brett Raeburn All right. I wonder where that came from.
Jake Frank I don't. I don't speak a lot of Latin.
Jake Frank So.
Brett Raeburn So I guess we'll just jump right into it. How long have you been working as a fisheries biologist? Well, as any job. How long have you been at Yellowstone National Park?
Pat Bigelow I've been here in this job for 23 years.
Brett Raeburn Wow.
Pat Bigelow I've been working in fisheries for 36 years.
Jake Frank Probably so. Fresh out of middle school.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Pat Bigelow Exactly.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Pat Bigelow I was really fortunate that I got some great opportunities early in life.
Brett Raeburn Very cool. And so how did you get your start here? 20, 23 years ago.
Pat Bigelow Actually, my first job was here in 1979. I was in Bozeman working a summer job, and I went down to the unemployment office to see if I could just give something better. And there was a poster up on the wall for a young Adult Conservation Corps in Yellowstone National Park, and I jumped at it. It sounded interesting.
Pat Bigelow I came down here. We had a I don't know if you guys are familiar with the YCC camp, but when we were actual Corps members, we had a girls dorm, boys dorm and a dining hall and six Corps members to a room you each had a bunk bed, a foot locker and half of the clothes locker and no dividers or anything like that.
Pat Bigelow You know, you definitely felt like you had just been recruited into some kind of institution. [laughing]
Brett Raeburn In some ways that is that maybe.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Pat Bigelow But it was great because we had 100 Corps members who all worked for different offices in the park, and I was very fortunate. A friend of mine and I that started at the same time to work with Fish and Wildlife Service and back then Fish and Wildlife Service did the fisheries work in Yellowstone.
Jake Frank Well, when did that change? That went from Fisheries.
Pat Bigelow To Park Service?
Jake Frank Yeah, to Park Service.
Pat Bigelow I think it was in 96.
Jake Frank Okay.
Pat Bigelow So the Fish and Wildlife Service started here even before the Park Service because of the unique fisheries opportunity and the Yellowstone cutthroat in particular. And then they established a research station in the fifties. They had a hatchery here early on, early twenties, thirties into the fifties. And then after that, they kind of went more to a research station, and then they had a management office, which is who I worked for that advises the Park Service, kind of like a fish and game agency.
Pat Bigelow You know, advises the state on how to set their regulations. Fish and Wildlife Service. And kinda kept the Park Service up to date on there.
Jake Frank And my my history is not great, but I if I remember reading, it's even before the National Park Service, there was, like, the predecessor to the Fish and Wildlife Services who stocked the lakes and did a lot of the fisheries stuff in Yellowstone.
Pat Bigelow Correct US Fish Commission back then as early as 1889. Yeah, we're doing some stocking in Yellowstone National Park.
Jake Frank Wow. Yeah. A lot of history.
Pat Bigelow Yeah.
Pat Bigelow Yeah, yeah.
Pat Bigelow Fisheries history in the in the park is really kind of a reflection of fisheries management history for the country, really.
Brett Raeburn Yeah. Yeah, That's awesome. So when you started, did you know it sounds like you kind of just saw a poster and. And got a little lucky in that way? Did you know that there were jobs where people worked with fish in national parks?
Pat Bigelow I hate to say I probably shouldn't even tell you this, but when.
Brett Raeburn We can edit it out if we need to. [laughing]
Pat Bigelow When I first moved to Bozeman, one of my coworkers said, Well, have you been to Yellowstone Park yet? As I was trying to figure out what to do for the weekend. And I said, What do you mean, a park? Is it, you know, like ferris wheels?
Jake Frank Yeah, does it have slides? [laughing]
Brett Raeburn I've had visitors ask me where the zip lines are. So, yeah, I think I think that's a well.
Jake Frank To be fair, they’re in West Yellowstone. So.
Pat Bigelow And I want to say I was very young then.
Brett Raeburn Sure. Lots to learn. Yeah. So. So you hadn't you, you were pleasantly surprised that there were actually jobs where you could do that, then?
Pat Bigelow That was awesome. And one of my first full weeks working for the Fish and Wildlife Service, they were doing their annual survey on Yellowstone Lake of the cutthroat trout. And so it meant spending a week on a boat gillnetting on the lake. And we spent a night in in the Park Service cabin on Peel Island because we were doing work in that area and we wanted to stay close to it.
Pat Bigelow And unlike typical weather on Yellowstone Lake, it was Bluebird days and flat, calm water the whole week and then the cutthroat that we were catching. If you haven't ever seen cutthroat trout, they are beautiful fish.
Brett Raeburn Can you describe them for those of us who haven't seen one.
Pat Bigelow So, so. So they're called cutthroat because they have a red slash under there on either side, under their jaw. And they, you know, a kind of a typical trout. They have the same, you know, body form and then black spots more on the tail and you get less as you move forward toward the head. But, they can get really brightly colored and they tend to be olive yellow, brown.
Pat Bigelow And they can, especially during spawning season, they can get this brilliant red sides and a circular plates and stuff. They can they're just beautiful.
Brett Raeburn That's cool. That's cool.
Jake Frank Well, yeah. When we came out on the boat this summer, when you guys were doing your research, you were pulling out some hogs that were huge.
Brett Raeburn Yeah. Yeah. So you've got a fish bigger than Jake's 40 pounder?
Pat Bigelow Not a cutthroat. [laughing]
Brett Raeburn It's all about competition here. So. So describe to us like a typical day. So obviously, there's going to be a lot of variance. But if you if someone asked you what your typical day like is as a fisheries biologist, what was it like? What would you tell th
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