Since 2005, Discovery’s “Deadliest Catch” has chronicled the lives of the men and women who fish for crab in the Bering Sea off the coast of Alaska.

One of the fishermen the show has featured is Elliott Neese, who captained the Ramblin’ Rose and F/V Saga on five seasons of “Deadliest Catch” before leaving to enter a drug addiction treatment program.

Neese completed his rehab program and returned to Alaska to captain another non-“Deadliest Catch” fishing boat, but in December of 2021, he pled guilty to dealing narcotics on the Kenai Peninsula and was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for those charges. Neese’s personal and legal struggles aside, his passion for crab fishing and his love for the sea comes through clearly on screen, and Neese shared with The Blast Zone just where that deeply-held love came from.

In the interview, Neese shared how his connection to crabbing reached all the way back to childhood and spoke of his family’s ties to the profession. “My dad was a crab fisherman,” Neese said. “The first time I was on a crab boat was when I was 2 years old. I fell in love with crabbing and wanted to own a crab boat.”

Elliott Neese started working on crab boats as a teenager

After his father showed him the ropes as a crab fisherman before he could even walk, Elliott Neese scuttled quickly towards the profession, getting his first job in the field before most of his peers had graduated from high school.”I started pot fishing when I was 16,” Neese said. “Everyone else was partying over spring break and I went fishing instead.”

Neese was instantly enamored with both the camaraderie and income that came along with crab fishing, saying that his first experience working on a crab boat was “Amazing! I got paid full share within a day of being on the boat. I worked with a group of great guys. It was like living on cloud 9. It was the coolest thing ever.” Just a dozen years later, Neese was captaining the Ramblin’ Rose and was a star on “Deadliest Catch.”

While fame and fortune may have come too quickly for Neese, his fans are pulling for him to recover fully from his addiction and perhaps even make a return to the show.

In a comment on a YouTube video marking Neese’s departure from “Deadliest Catch,”  Cuzican27 paid Neese a compliment before expressing hope that he could bounce back fully, writing, “I know for a fact when he’s sober, he’s in the top 5 captains of the Bering Sea. His problem solving on the fly is like watching a magician. Hopefully he can stay on the right path now with fighting the addiction.”