Deadliest Catch Captain Keith Colburn is finally letting us in on the reason behind his distrust of the Discovery show’s newcomer, Captain Steve “Harley” Davidson.
In Tuesday’s all-new episode of the docuseries, Colburn came head-to-head with the Southern Wind captain in their quest to find a source of crab away from the crowded mud pit, revealing that one time they fished in close proximity to each other, the feud nearly ended in blows.
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“I don’t trust that guy,” he told the camera. “There’s history between me and Harley, and it goes back a decade.”
Elaborating on his accusations of Davidson being a crab thief, Colburn recalled, “He basically spot checked some of my pots and then turned around and immediately set right down my string.”
In addition to drawing the crab away from his pots, the Wizard captain revealed he “ended up with about a half dozen tangles and lost some gear.”
“I caught him red-handed,” he huffed. “Let’s just say by the time we got done talking on the beach, we had to get broken up.”
With the Wizard finally happening on some good numbers, Colburn said he aimed to “get [Davidson] off my scent,” adding, “Right now, I just don’t need him around my gear.”
Calling Davidson on his radio, Colburn tried to trick the other veteran captain into heading south, where he claimed to have found a good source of crab earlier in the week.
“That crab to the south is pure deception,” he chuckled to the camera. “There’s no crab down there.”
But Davidson, sitting on a secret cache of crab himself, wasn’t buying the sudden niceties.
“I think he’s trying to keep me away from something, that’s what I’m thinking,” he told his deck boss. “I think better go keep him honest, check one of his spots here and see if he really does know what’s going on.”
Laughing as he charted a course right at Colburn, Davidson told the camera, “Gotta keep an eye on that little guy.”
Upon finding a Wizard pot exactly where he was told they wouldn’t be, Davidson joked he was “starting to go to the dark side,” and did just what had gotten him in trouble with Colburn the first time — a legal, but frowned-upon spot check.
“This is really bad, really bad,” he said, chuckling to himself. “This is good.”
Is this king crab season going to end in a fist fight for real this time?
Deadliest Catch airs Tuesdays at 9 p.m. ET on Discovery.
Photo credit: Discovery
