Wrapping Up King Crab Season | Deadliest Catch

260 miles northeast of Dutch Harbor, the Time Bandit is racing to close out the king crab season. We’re on our fourth trip, we’ve got 40s and 50s. I’m happier than hell, but I think we’re going to get some real good numbers down here. Stand by! Woo! You guys are badass! The short timers—now that’s what they call us.

A huge storm is bearing down from the west, and it could shut them down. But if Jonathan’s last string pays off, they’re heading home. We’ve got it made in the shade, pretty much. We don’t know yet—can’t think that far ahead.

We’re going to check the first spot, and the thing about the first pot is, whatever that pot has, the rest of them are probably going to have that. So if it’s blank, then the rest of them are probably going to be blank too. Nice big boys, we’ll take it—probably about a 45.

There! Good, good! See off the top. Get that crab on top of the pot.

67, 39, 54, 39, 65, 52, 59, 23, 31—the Hillstrand secret grounds have paid off all season long. This is a great-looking pot, even better because I know it’s our last trip. And numbers like this mean it’s a shorter trip.

Now Jonathan needs to maintain a 21 average—71 and catch it quickly. Just when things were going smoothly—

“Hey Mike, did you feel that? I think we got something in the wheel.”

The Time Bandit is dragging 1,000 lb of steel across the ocean bottom. Uh-oh, not good. Like when we sat there’s no gear, and I come back four days later—there’s loads of gear everywhere.

The momentary distraction has the Time Bandit tangled in another boat’s gear. I traced the Wizard going right up one of my strings, pot for pot. Well, I set the gear six days ago, Keith, and I don’t have time to play your games. I could care less about his gear; I could care less where he’s fishing. He kicked one off over here—not on purpose.

“Hey, I pulled my pot, sucked his pot underneath my boat, and his buoys came up right by my prop. He put it in gear and sucked it right in. That’s what happens when they cork you off, man.”

We were just pulling our pot; we freed one pot, and we had one in our rudder. Stupid kindergarten game. That’s what I feel about that. Now I’m done talking about that.

That’s the kind of person you need to play pin the tail on the donkey with. You don’t want to have a line in your wheel, and it gets in your cutless bearing—everything all in. It’s not a good thing.

Disappeared—where’d it go? Free, pop free. Yeah, we still got our props and shafts; everybody’s happy.

It’s a good thing that pot came out of our wheel, because then we’d have to maybe go in there and dive and cut it all out. That’s why you don’t set your pot that close to somebody else’s pot—’cause that happens.

Anyway, casualties of war suck. I don’t know whose pot it was, but we ran somebody’s pot over. It wasn’t ours, I know that, so that’s all that matters. Really, out here, it happens, man.

Now I’m back to business. This one’s got to produce. Let’s drop down. I only need like a 21 average, so we’re almost there.

With a major storm closing in, Jonathan won’t be able to reset. He needs these pots to come up full—it’s go time!

“Man, we have 13 pots left and a big storm coming. Come on, guys!”

See, I can’t even stand up in my workplace.

“That was badass, dude. That is badass. 25. It’s probably five crab in that boat—not great, but if they can keep it up, it’ll be good enough for a ticket home.”

Perfect. Jonathan’s gamble on his scallop bed honey hole has paid off all season. Now the Time Bandit boys are down to their last bet.

24, 24, 13, perfect, 38—we actually got a 40. We had some 10s, 13s, and 15s too. They’re fighting sloppy seas for a mixed bag of 10s and 40s, but so far they’re holding their own with the 25 average they need.

“But we got six pots left. R take, make it count!”

“We actually got a 40. I’m not going to say anything yet, because all of a sudden it could be blanks. Five more pots and we’re going home.”

“Oh yeah, brother! A good one there. Four more pots and they’re headed for home.”

Coming down to the wire, still got three more. “Oh, you ready to go home, Mike? Come on!”

“Hell yeah! Keepers, Mikey, like it.”

Lucky pot number three comes up jammed with 50-plus keepers.

“Go! No!”

The Time Bandit finishes up the season with a pot or two to spare—gets a little more than we need, aren’t we? It’s always good when the last one is the best one.

“Nice work, Andy! That’s the best feeling in the world when the last pot breaks the rail. All I gotta do is put ’em away and go home.”

“Here we go, hell yeah! We’re out of here—try to beat the storm through False Pass. Hopefully, we’ll get on the next flight home.”

But there’s no time to celebrate—they still have to outrun the storm to False Pass. Still a long ways from home. “I gotta make it. I gotta get this boat through False Pass right now.”

False Pass is a narrow inlet with a dangerously shallow bottom. On a good day, it’s a shortcut into Ikatan Bay. Had a fun ride—sweet! “Oh yeah, here we go!”

But in a storm, the breakers in the pass can reach 30 feet and crush a boat like a beer can. Seas are going to build—we’re going to get out just in time to pass, but there’s going to be huge rollers and fast currents. The only time we can get in is at high water slack.

We’ll see. Even then, we might still not be able to get in. Hard to see right now—this is just ridiculous.

And now they’re catching hell from the storm they were hoping to outrun.

Storm warning today: Northwest wind 50 knots, gusts to 60 knots, out of passes, seas 22 feet.

As Captain Jonathan focuses on navigating safely to False Pass, below deck the crew gets a well-deserved break.

“Ready for vacation. Tired of looking at these guys.”

“We got a couple hour break, so I’m just hanging out, checking out pictures of my little guy, remembering a little bit about home—why I’m out here doing this stuff.”

“Yeah, I don’t really know what I want to do. I want to be a part of the legacy, but I want to be, you know, 100% towards my son’s life. If I can share this with my son, man, it is just phenomenal. It’s hard to be gone a long time, and you know, we’re out here, and it’s really tough to actually see all these pictures of them. If I didn’t have pictures, it probably wouldn’t be so bad.”

“I think about it every single day, and it’s really hard. It takes a lot out of me when I’m out here knowing that I’m missing a lot of stuff. When I was a kid, you were either on the boat or off the boat. It’s really tough to balance it all out.”