[man] see what we got.
[cage clanging]
[man] damn it!
-That's no good. -There's more bait than crab. That's not a good sign.
[josh] we definitely need bigger numbers than this.
Stack it.
We're in this together, so let's see if sig
-and anybody else sees anything out here. -Yeah.
Hey, it's josh, over from the time bandit here.
Sig, you seen any signs of life out there, pal?
No, man. We haven't found any consistency.
Hey, bill. What's going on, brother?
It's been pretty grim, so far. I'm pretty disappointed actually.
Monte! You're not called the bairdi king for nothing.
Oh, this has been painful, really painful.
I just... I'm not seeing it.
Honestly, I haven't heard of anybody that's going-- jumping up and down.
I'll let you know if I get a little taste of something. I'll let you know right way.
[josh] oh, [bleep].
[man shouting]
[johnathan] if we can't catch this crab quick and easy,
they're gonna shut us down next year.
We gotta do something here.
Mother lode! Come to papa!
[narrator] 325 miles from dutch harbor...
...Aboard the time bandit.
Definitely not near the amount that we need for an average right now.
Got to do something.
I don't want fish and game to shut us down.
[josh] we have exhausted everything.
There's no information at all.
[man groans]
[narrator] the illusive bairdi pull off a disappearing act,
putting the squeeze on captains josh harris,
johnathan hillstrand and the fleet at large...
-No. -...To pull crab out of a hat.
[josh] nobody has seen any signs of life.
[johnathan] we have one more guy we can talk to.
Question. What would phil harris do?
[laughing]
wwphd?
-What would your dad do? -He wouldn't [bleep] give up.
-He'd probably cover some depth in the swells. -Yeah.
So what I'm doing, is setting across the depths,
going downhill from shallow to deep,
and whatever end is best, then you concentrate on that.
So let's cover some depth. Let's draw a set,
plus we've got a full load of gear on.
-Back to basics, just like your dad would do. -Yeah.
Let's start all over again, let's just erase-- erase the board.
-Let's cover some depth. -You got it.
You got it. All right. Good call. Let's do it.
[narrator] the plan? Follow in phil harris' footsteps
and set from shallow to deep,
zeroing in on the bairdi's current hiding spot.
If we cover 200 miles, it's gonna take two days to set that, though.
[josh] we need some help.
[narrator] 62 miles northeast...
[whooping]
whoa!
Let's go!
Come on, crab. Come on, crab.
It is howling out there. It is nasty.
[narrator] on the cornelia marie...
[casey] we're trying to get this fleetwide quota caught right now.
The question is can we find pockets that are good enough to make a dollar?
Nothing.
[casey] dang it.
Ah, man.
Whoa!
Watch out.
Pot number two.
Blank.
At this rate, we get nothing.
We got a long way to go.
[phone ringing]
-hey, buddy. -[josh] what's going on, brother?
-You still seeing anything back over there? -No.
-You guys see anything? -We're not seeing [bleep].
It's not easy out there, everybody's scratching, man.
This is like dismal on dismal on dismal.
-Where exactly are you guys at right now? -West of home plate.
I think we're gonna take some advice from the old man and cover some depths.
You should come on over here, man. Help us divide and conquer.
[casey] sounds a lot better than what we've got going over here.
Right, man. We've got to finish hard.
-No giving up, man. No giving up. -All right. Well, I got 35
more to pick up here, then I'm gonna work my way towards you, so.
-Okay. -Maybe working together,
we can get our quotas buttoned up here.
-Right, dude. Thanks, man. -All right, buddy.
Well, josh doesn't know where they're at.
We don't know where they're at.
We might be able to dig something out of it.
It might be a little bit of a hail mary move,
but we gotta get something going here.
[narrator] 81 miles southwest...
On the summer bay...
[nick speaking]
[man] looks like you.
-Yeah, right? -Yeah. Definitely looks like you.
This is her.
She lives in dutch harbor with her mother.
[landon speaking]
I mean, you miss the little things. The first steps.
You miss, like, the first tooth coming out, you know.
Makes it all worth it, you know.
Yeah.
Cheers, guys.
Cheers to family.
[wild bill] here comes the first one.
We've got 110 pots in the water. Three of them are out.
I was really hoping we, uh, run across something here in our opening set.
[narrator] thousands of miles from loved ones, captain wild bill wichrowski
casts a 200-square-mile net in his search for bairdi bounty.
It helps that we're spread out enough
to run across something, and not have to regroup.
If we don't catch our crab, fish and game will look at that
and potentially not give us the fishery next year,
so it's really a big deal for us to get this stuff caught.
[narrator] the longer it takes to catch
the 2.4 million pound fleetwide bairdi quota,
the more likely captains could face a shutdown of the fishery.
[wild bill] if we don't have a season for three years,
I'm worried about losing my [bleep] boat.
Kinda wanna see 40s, 50s...
Come on.
You see crab?
What the [bleep]?
My [bleep] blood pressure's through the roof right now.
[wild bill speaking]
that was 100% snails. Not one fricking crab.
[yelling]
nothing.
Zero.
It's a big zero. Nothing but a pot of snails.
[bleep] me.
Now we're gonna stack it.
-Damn it! -A rough night on the bering sea.
-[groaning] -man down!
Oh, my god.
[man] hey, you okay, kenny?
You all right?
Kenny fell down. I don't know why.
Like, out of breath.
I'm gonna keep my feet on the deck.
-Hey, clayton? -Yeah?
Step up. See if you can help.
[narrator] dazed from his fall, kenny gives up
his duties tying pots...
-"baptism by fire." -[narrator] ...Leaving veteran landon cheney
no choice but to try new hire, clayton gore, on the stack.
[nick speaking]
clayton's not a bad guy. He's actually done a good job,
but he's relatively new.
We're under the gun. We really need clayton to hurry the [bleep] up.
I'll put holes in the pot. Dang, I'll put holes in the pot.
He's built for the stack. I mean, that's kind of the lower center of gravity...
You know, looks like a wrestler, you know, kinda that physique.
[nick] ready?
-[yelling] -holy [bleep].
[narrator] on the summer bay...
[nick] ready?
-[yelling] -holy [bleep].
God!
I'm really good at facial expressions and reading lips and...
He's not happy about something.
[man] hey!
-Your foot okay? -Yeah. Go.
[nick] clayton needs to be more careful out there.
[wild bill] we got a long way to go.
It's taking forever to find the pot, but we'll get it.
We just gotta find them. Once we find them, we'll bomb the snot out of it.
[narrator] 255 miles southeast...
[indistinct yelling]
...On the wizard.
[whooping] come on.
[man 2] there we go!
Come on, baby.
Damn it.
What is this?
The mystery continues.
-[phone ringing] -tell you what.
Those sneaky little bastards is what they are.
-Hello, wizard. -[keith colburn] fishing picking up now?
I've yet to find.
What are you getting now? What are you looking at?
I figure I've got about 14,000 lbs on here.
-No good. -Hasn't been easy, you know.
But... Just grinding it out.
[keith] just keep chewing through the gears, dude,
because we've got an awful lot of crab to catch.
-You know, we can't sell these bairdi sitting on the table. -Yeah.
[narrator] with brother, keith colburn, piling on the pressure to perform,
captain monte shoulders the fleet's single largest bairdi quota.
Being the last boat to enter this fishery
with as big a number we got is a little bit daunting.
-It's just absolutely ugly out here. -Well, do your best.
Safety first, you know. Everything comes after that.
Just try to keep grinding through.
Well, you know, we've got a long ways to go.
Yeah. [sighs]
-tell the guys I said hello. -I will. Talk to you later. Bye.
[seagulls cawing]
[clanking]
what the hell's the noise down there?
Hey, jahmiah. Go dash in the galley.
-I think the fridge is open. -Roger.
[narrator] along with his duties on deck,
-greenhorn jahmiah hoogan... -Oh, dude!
-Really, bro? -...Usually gets any foul job that comes up.
No! Not on the table, bro.
[monte] from what's coming over my rail,
I would have to say that there's not a whole lot
of western bairdi out here to target.
Oh, dude!
Man, where's our crab at?
[monte] I feel like we're spinning our wheels out here.
[yelling]
-we're gonna stack 'em up and get 'em together here. -Roger.
Hi, bud.
See, we're homies.
Oh, dude. No! No! Outside.
Not cool. Not cool.
[monte] jahmiah, what did you find in there?
[jahmiah on comms]
[laughing] right on. There you go.
-Was he safely seen off the vessel? -Yeah. He was.
-He's a goner. -Roger.
[laughing]
all right. Let's get back to work.
I don't believe it, man.
A handful of babies in that one.
Another zero.
Big [bleep] coming through here. Hang on.
Holy [bleep]!
[monte over pa] heads up, heads up.
Son of a bitch!
[bleep] ugly out here.
This is bairdi fishing for you.
Weather's turning all the bins over.
[monte on pa] sorry about the ride, guys. I'll get it smoothed out here.
Yeah. If you can warn these guys,
give them a chance to get behind something,
less chance they're gonna end up on their ass.
The trick now is to just try to get through these things
as quick and safely as we can, and...
Move on.
[narrator] 291 miles northwest...
-[johnathan] anybody out here? -[casey on radio] right here.
-What's his code name? -Cheeto.
-Tito's? -No. That's sick.
[casey] yo, boo-boo. Yo, boo-boo.
Let's fill up our picnic baskets.
There she goes.
What's going on there, yogi? [laughing]
um, we're just kinda formulating a plot.
Over!
[josh] we're gonna start testing our depths.
So we got our little plan.
[casey] yeah, sounds good.
-You ready? -Over.
All right, boo-boo. We'll talk to you later.
We're splitting up the depths. We'll see if that harris luck pays off.
Going over!
Okay, guys. Set this for mr. Phil harris.
Over!
[josh] nobody in the fleet is catching anything,
so we just had to dip into our past, man.
-For your pops. -Boo-ya.
-[whooping] -[man] big ones!
[narrator] 307 miles northwest of dutch harbor...
[wild bill speaking]
paid for the bait, anyway.
[narrator] one day into prospecting a 200-square-mile swath of gear...
Nothing.
Numbers are actually going the wrong direction.
...The bairdi play more hide than seek with wild bill's pots.
[wild bill] yeah. This string's been a disaster.
We got a one, zero, one, zero, five, ten and then this one.
[man] yeah!
Man, don't be blank!
Okay, okay. There's life.
Some kind of life in there. I don't know what it is.
At least it ain't blank.
[man speaking]
yeah.
-Yeah. -[whooping]
[man] 22. 2-2 in the pots.
Hopefully, this brings us good luck.
We need all the luck we can get right now.
-[man on comms] oh, here we go! -Yeah.
Yeah!
All right. Now we're fishing.
Hey, bill. The fishing seemed to pick up
on my daughter's buoy, the lennyn buoy.
Weird, right?
[wild bill speaking]
I think we might change our luck here today,
in a real short amount of time.
Maybe this is the right depth, or maybe the fact
that nick put his daughter's name on this pot
might be the kicker we need.
We baited by that, there's nothing there either, but...
-I'm kind of seeing stars on this thing. -[man] roger.
[narrator] with only one pot showing signs of life,
bill bets on family, hoping the lennyn buoy changes their fortune.
I guess we'll give it our best and then...
If that's not good enough, then I don't know what to say.
Going over!
[narrator] 252 miles southeast...
[indistinct pa announcement]
going over!
[narrator] after a disappointing haul in the northern shallows...
[monte] just dumping some gear now.
And then all the gear will be hauled down into this region.
We gotta keep looking. We don't know how this is gonna go.
[narrator] captain monte colburn moves
the last of his 200 pots into deeper southern waters.
[monte] maybe by leaving these pots on the bottom,
something will actually crawl in them for a change.
Just trying to get the last of them off of here.
Oh, dude!
[man speaking]
-that bird [bleep]? -That's bird [bleep].
[laughing]
wow! Lucky set.
A seagull [bleep] on me.
That's how my day is going.
[monte] in light of the activities here with jahmiah,
and the birds,
we're gonna call this next dump the seagull string.
-Oh, yeah. -Certainly hoping this is a good spot.
We need this one to pop for us.
Going over!
Bit of a battle here.
Over!
[narrator] 245 miles northwest...
Weather's really starting to come up now.
[man] watch out!
That's [bleep] got some teeth on it.
Gimme some more.
I think she's gonna answer back in a mean [bleep] way later today.
Going over!
Yeah.
[wild bill] tides are [bleep] and the fishing's slow to begin with,
so stretching one out here where we saw a little bit of sign
and I'm not gonna mess with it for a day or two here.
Good luck charm.
[narrator] still 15,000 lbs short of his bairdi quota,
wild bill sets his gear back on the one bright spot
in an otherwise dismal first haul...
We've got bags that are named after nick's kids,
if it brings us some good luck, we'll continue to do it.
...Where nick mcglashan's lennyn pot
brought life and luck 12 hours ago.
Gonna do the same thing. So much more buoys with their names on it.
[nick] daddy loves you.
[landon] hopefully it turns out to be lucky for us.
Going over!
I'll give it a soak and then I come back
and we're not seeing anything,
I'm gonna entertain the idea of just putting this stuff on
and quit throwing money over the side of the boat.
I mean, it seems like catching the quota is almost...
...Unreachable. If it's not gonna happen, you gotta make a decision.
Thirty-something seasons and I've never seen anything like this.
Weather's starting to pick up. It's gonna be blowing
around 50 knots, and it's gonna get real out here.
[man groans]
watch out, guys.
Watch out! Watch out!
Oh, [bleep].
[man] damn it!
[narrator] on the summer bay...
Watch out, guys.
Watch out! Watch out!
-Oh, [bleep]. -[man] yeah, look out!
Damn it!
[narrator] a rogue wave takes aim at the portside shelter wall,
turning an 800-pound pot into a lethal weapon,
and nearly taking out deck hand kenny jensen.
[man] the bering sea owns you.
I mean, obviously we're looking for something we can work on.
Can you pull that hook?
[wild bill] if we can pull this off...
...I'm not gonna argue with luck.
[narrator] 249 miles southeast...
[monte over pa]
[man] come on, baby.
This happens to be jahmiah's string, the seagull string.
Let's see how he does here.
It's a tough one, but if it brings us some luck... You know what I'm saying?
[narrator] after struggling through a woeful 25 average...
Starting to put the gear on the boat. We are oh, so ready.
...Captain monte bets a gull's feces was a sign to set his pots,
and, hopefully, uncover the bairdi species.
I got a kid at home. I got a family to take care of.
-Come on. Let's get this done. -Come on, baby.
We need to start seeing something come aboard here.
Come on, jahmiah. Come on.
[man] what do we got?
[all cheering]
there's a few in there. Count it up.
Four-zero. 40.
Four-zero. We need more. We need more. Come on, baby.
Yeah!
[man shouting]
sixty-two. We're getting like exactly what we need.
[man] let's go, jahmiah!
[man on comms]
69 is a strong score. Let's see some more of them and we'll go home.
Right on, jahmiah.
Maybe seagulls are good luck.
[narrator] 254 miles northwest...
When I met your dad years ago, he goes, "come on, kid. Come here."
he said, "we're gonna set. You gotta always cover depth."
so when he set a 250-pot string, he'd set the whole thing in one long line.
That's the most important thing, to know what depth you're at.
I've been doing that forever.
[narrator] captains josh and johnathan...
[casey] this is not just about the two boats, it's about the entire fishery.
We have to produce, as a group,
to show that there's still biomass out here.
...And captain casey, eager to do as phil harris would do,
haul from shallow to deep, across a 50-fathom drop...
We're more than a day late.
...In hope of finding a depth where the slippery bairdi are holing up.
All right, guys. Coming up.
Hopefully, there's some luck in this string.
[narrator] the game is simple. Josh and john pull gear
between 64 and 89 fathoms...
[casey] all right.
-You ready? -Ready!
...While casey works shallower depths, up to 63 fathoms.
[casey] right now, I'm starting off at 38.
[narrator] first one to hit the crabs, wins.
Gotta cover a lot of depth
to 64 fathoms.
[josh] okay, old man. Let's see what you got for us.
Ay-ay-ay.
[casey] dang it.
First crab pot is a blank.
Nothing.
Right there, boys. We almost had one.
-Almost. -Whoa!
[casey on pa]
[johnathan] you know what it means when guys like us get off to a bad start?
Not a [bleep] thing! That's what that means.
[laughing]
seventy-two. Let's see what's going on here.
[casey] 40 fathoms.
Stack that one.
[all booing]
[casey] if we don't catch it, then it could go away for a minimum of three years,
so we got our work cut out for us right now.
[johnathan] 74.
[casey] 47 fathoms.
So far the only thing I've found is where not to go.
At some point, that harris luck has to run out.
I mean, I hope it doesn't, but...
Wow! That's a lot of codfish.
[casey] 50 fathoms.
That's a bairdi. Just a little guy.
-That's what we're looking for, just bigger. -A lot bigger.
[johnathan] 87.
Wah, wah, wah.
[man] and I'm out.
[josh] it's the fourth quarter,
there's 17 seconds left, you're down by six.
That's where we're at, right now.
[johnathan] 89.
This'll make or break us.
Josh, we're saving the best for last.
Making the magic. There you go, buddy.
[narrator] and when all else fails,
add a little harris luck to your harris strategy.
[johnathan] the lord works in mysterious ways.
The harris method of bairdology.
It just might work.
The old man, you know, he might shine a light on us.
[josh] hopefully, he saves our season.
-[whooping] -see what the old man's doing.
[narrator] this week, on salty takes...
[man speaking]
[kenny speaking]
I am going to eat a few snails.
They're really good. These guys don't know what they're missing.
I know exactly what I'm missing.
[kenny] if they have green fur on them,
well, that can make you definitely ill, possibly kill you. Hallucinate.
Dude, you better not get sick.
You realize you gonna lose your job. Bill's gonna fire you.
Oh, there it goes. It's starting to boil.
Yes!
[man speaking]
it's a little hard.
[narrator] bill, your boys have a knack
for eating sea creatures not normally on the menu.
Don't you feed 'em? Stock the fridge, man.
[josh] okay, old man. Let's see what you got for us.
Be there. Be there.
[all whooping]
yeah! I love it!
-We got 100. -[johnathan whoops]
-[whoops] all right. -Ah-ha, harris.
This is what we're looking for.
-Forty-one? Forty-one. -Forty-one.
-That's what we need. -You pulled this off, harris.
Harris! [whooping]
-wait till you see this one. -Yeah, baby, baby.
[laughing] yeah!
-Yeah, baby. [whoops] -all right!
That's the fullest we've seen this table this season.
-[man] right there, that's a pretty full table. -[whooping]
one-thirty-three, dude. 133, harris.
I love you. I love you, man.
[all whooping and cheering]
[josh] zeroing in.
We got some reporting to do.
Might wanna know about this.
Let 'em know what we're seeing.
-[phone ringing] -[casey] yeah.
-[josh] we hit the mother lode, dude. -Seriously?
That's good. We'll hunt 'em down. Zero in on 'em.
It's two prod, I bet you.
Holy [bleep]!
If you need to be warmer, drop by. We got you covered.
All right. We'll be in the hood together, for sure. That's good.
All right. Now we're gonna get serious about hauling this gear.
Yeah. That's [bleep] what I'm talking about.
This'll take us to the glory promised land.
Let's get them while they're hot.
[narrator] 23 miles southwest...
[wild bill] it's been a big, big butt whipping.
But we're coming up on the lennyn strings.
We'll see if it actually brought us good luck.
I sure hope so. We need it.
We've experienced a lot of consistently bad fishing.
It would be nice to experience some consistently good fishing.
Come on, crabs. Come on, crabs.
Let's see what happened.
Yeah.
There's some crab there.
-Thirty-six. Thirty-six. -[wild bill] thirty-six crabs.
I'm not gonna act like I'm really excited,
but I'm pleased that there's something there. I needed it.
There's some crab in this bitch.
Finally nice to see some bairdi in all these pots.
Best thing we've seen all season.
[man on comms]
[wild bill] who knows, maybe we found it.
[all cheering]
[man] 54. Five-four.
This could be an abundance of crab here.
Cross your fingers.
Finally seeing some crab
and it happens to be on my daughter's string.
Little lucky lennyn's string.
Hauled a lot of gear. These guys are ready to go home.
Come on, baby. [whooping]
we're wrapping it up. We're outta here.
[squawking]
be free, buddy!
Thanks for the crabs.
Finally done.
Maybe this whole working together thing's
actually gonna pay off for all of us.
[man on comms] mother lode! Come to papa!
Yeah!
[all cheering]
well, old man. You saved our ass again.
[whooping]
[man shouting]
if everything I had had 16 in it,
it'd probably take us a week to finish, so we can do it.
If we're not catching them, we're not gonna have another season,
so I'm glad guys are starting to put some into tanks.
[man] oh, yeah!
We're fishing at half strength right now, but the quota hasn't changed at all.
That's on us to catch it.
We're trying hard for it, but it's been a tall order.
Still got a ways to go.
[johnathan] we're all living on a prayer, for sure.
Living on a prayer, for sure.
[seagull cawing]