Big Bass Hold & Spinner Megaways Demo & review

Big Bass Hold & Spinner Megaways takes the two bonuses of the 5x3 Hold & Spinner, coin respins and fisherman free spins, and moves them onto Megaways reels with tumbles and a retrigger ladder that has no top step. Pragmatic Play's Reel Kingdom studio released it in August 2023. It suits bonus buyers and series regulars who want a higher ceiling than the original and can live with High volatility.

The first screen before our first spin, with the extra rows above the middle reels and 12,960 ways. FluxPlays demo test, 1 November 2026.

How Big Bass Hold & Spinner Megaways works

Wins pay on ways, from the leftmost reel across adjacent reels, and every win tumbles away to let new symbols drop in. Reels 1 and 6 show up to six symbols. Reels 2 to 5 also borrow up to three extra rows from a strip above them, which spins right to left and locks or unlocks at random, for as many as 147,456 ways.

The top extra row holds only WILDs and blanks, and it is the only place a WILD can land. Our first screen showed 12,960 ways, and later spins dropped as low as 576.

Fish carry cash values, but only fishermen in the free spins collect them. In the base game a fish is cleared and replaced like any other symbol. MYSTERY symbols can also land there and all turn into the same paying symbol.

How the parts connect:

1. Three or more COIN MONEY symbols start Hold & Spin, a coin respin round.
2. Three to six scatters start free spins, where fishermen collect FISH MONEY.
3. Every fourth fisherman retriggers and raises the collection multiplier, with no limit.
4. Both rounds can be bought, and the base game and both rounds share one cap.

For us, Hold & Spin carries the game. The free spins are the Big Bass collect with a longer ladder.

How Hold & Spin works

Three or more COIN MONEY symbols, each worth 1x to 30x the bet, start the round and stay where they landed. You get three respins, and every new coin puts the count back to three. DIAMOND MONEY symbols can join with values from 50x to 2,000x. Every round pays at least 20x the bet, and it ends when three respins pass without a new coin.

Our bought round opened with $59.00 of coins on the trigger spin. New coins kept resetting the respins and a diamond landed, and the round paid $324.00 in all.

Our bought Hold & Spin round part-way: coins and a $50.00 diamond held on the night reels, with a counter beside the boat reading $197.00. FluxPlays demo test, 1 November 2026.

Free spins: how they trigger and how far the ladder goes

Three, four, five or six scatters award 10, 15, 20 or 25 free spins. Each fisherman WILD collects every FISH MONEY value on screen, and a fish can be worth as little as 2x or as much as 5,000x the bet.

Every fourth fisherman adds ten spins. The first retrigger doubles collections and the second triples them. The third takes them to x10, and each one after that adds ten more to the multiplier, with no limit on retriggers.

On a spin where fishermen land with no fish, dynamite can throw some in, and MYSTERY symbols turn into random symbols.

Our bought free spins with six left: fish on the reels and the ladder on the right, still at its first step. FluxPlays demo test, 1 November 2026.

The bought free spins ended at $24.20 after one fisherman in ten spins. FluxPlays demo test, 1 November 2026.

Bonus buy: prices and what you get

Both rounds can be bought, and there is no ante to switch on.

The buy button says Hold & Spinner, while the help pages call the round Hold & Spin. They are the same round.

The Hold & Spin buy is the one we would take. Its guaranteed minimum means it never comes back empty, while bought free spins live or die on fishermen turning up.

RTP, volatility and max win

The base game and both buys carry the same RTP, the top version, and casinos can run lower ones. One review site lists 96.07%, but the help pages say 96.70%. The volatility label is High.

The cap in the table applies alike in the base game, the free spins and Hold & Spin, and play stops the moment a round gets there. A top fish collected at the third retrigger level passes it on its own.

Which version is this?

Our Big Bass Hold & Spinner Megaways demo test

Neither bonus came on its own. 18 of the base spins paid, all of them small tumble wins, and the best was $7.20. With fish paying nothing outside the free spins and WILDs confined to the top row, there was little else to lift a base spin.

The two buys showed why the game leans on Hold & Spin. The bought free spins brought a single fisherman in ten spins, so fish that landed on the other nine paid nothing. The Hold & Spin round described above was the only part of the session that returned more than it cost.

A natural trigger, a retrigger and the MYSTERY symbols did not appear, so the ladder and the mysteries come from the help pages. A session this short says nothing about the game's long-run return.

Is Big Bass Hold & Spinner Megaways worth playing?

Only if you are playing for the bonuses, and ideally buying them. Hold & Spin has a floor, diamonds and a reset on every new coin, and the free spins ladder keeps going where most Big Bass ladders stop. The base game gives you little to do while you wait: tumbles of small symbols, a WILD that can only land up top and fish that only count later.

Pick Big Bass - Hold & Spinner if you want the same two bonuses on 10 lines, at Medium volatility, with an ante. Pick the Megaways version if you want tumbles, the open-ended ladder and twice the ceiling, and accept High volatility for them.

In the demo, buy Hold & Spin first and count how often a new coin resets the respins. That reset is what decides how big the round gets.