Big Bass - Hold & Spinner Demo & review

Big Bass - Hold & Spinner puts two separate bonuses on one Big Bass reel set: the series' fisherman free spins, and a coin respin round that the original never had. Pragmatic Play released it under its Reel Kingdom label in March 2023, and a Megaways version followed later that year. Both bonuses can be bought, which makes it a game for players who like to pick their feature rather than wait for it.

How Big Bass - Hold & Spinner works

The base game pays on 10 fixed lines from the leftmost reel of a 5x3 grid. The fisherman wild appears only in free spins, so ordinary spins pay through line wins alone. The fishing float is the one symbol that pays for two, and five of them pay 200x the bet.

How the features connect:

1. Diamond and gold coin money symbols carry a random value on every spin. Three of them start the Hold & Spinner.
2. Fish symbols carry their own money values on every spin, but those are paid only in free spins.
3. Three, four or five scatters start free spins, where each fisherman wild collects every fish value on screen.
4. Every fourth fisherman retriggers free spins and multiplies what the fish collect.
5. The ante adds scatters and makes the respin round more likely. Both bonuses can also be bought.

Free spins carry the top end, since fish values reach far higher than coins. The Hold & Spinner is the steadier of the two rounds.

Big Bass - Hold & Spinner at $1 before our first spin: the 5x3 lake, the ante switch and both buy panels. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

How the Hold & Spinner works

Three money symbols on one spin start it. They stay in place while everything else fades, and the round gets four respins. Every respin that lands a new money symbol resets the count to four and adds the money values on screen to the round's total. When a full set of respins passes with nothing new, the round ends and pays what it has collected.

Coins take values from 1x up to 2,000x the bet, from a fixed list in the rules. Most values on that list are 25x or less, and seven reach 50x or more.

Rules page 2 in our demo session: money symbol values, the Hold & Spinner respins and the fish money values. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Our bought Hold & Spinner mid-round: coins of $14.00, $2.00, $4.00 and $5.00 held, $50.00 collected and two of four lives left. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Free spins: how they trigger

Three, four or five scatters give 10, 15 or 20 free spins, played on special reels. Each fisherman wild that lands collects the money value of every fish on screen, and when a wild is showing, extra fish can appear at random at the end of a spin.

Every fisherman is also counted toward a ladder. The fourth adds 10 spins and doubles fish collections, the eighth adds 10 more at 3x, and the twelfth adds a last 10 at 10x, after which the round cannot retrigger. Fish values run up to 10,000x the bet on their own, so the ladder is what turns this round from a few catches into a big one.

Rules page 3 in our demo session: free spins, the fisherman collect and the retrigger ladder. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Bonus buy and ante: prices and what you get

Both buys cost the same, so the choice is about which round you want, not what you pay. Free Spins lands three to five scatters at random, and Hold & Spinner lands three to five money symbols with random values. The ante is charged on every spin instead. It puts more scatters on the reels and raises the chance of the respin round, and with it on, both buy panels went grey in our demo.

RTP, volatility and max win

The rules give 96.07% for normal play and for both buys, and 96.09% with the ante. That is lower than the original Big Bass Bonanza's, and the game is labelled medium volatility.

No win can go past 10,000x the bet, and a free spins round stops the moment it gets there and pays the cap.

Rules page 5 in our demo session: medium volatility, 10 lines, the RTP for play, ante and both buys, bets $0.10 to $375. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Our Big Bass - Hold & Spinner demo test

The two buys showed the two halves of the game clearly. The Hold & Spinner started from $23.00 of coins, and new coins after the fourth and sixth respins kept it alive, one step at a time, until three blank respins closed it.

The bought free spins were the opposite: three fishermen landed, one short of the first retrigger, so the doubled collections never switched on. The best single catch was $20.00 on free spin 6.

Neither bonus arrived on its own in the base game, where two scatters showed on four spins without a third. The retrigger ladder never started for us either, so the multiplied collections are described from the rules. Two bought rounds and a short base session show how each bonus plays, not how well either pays.

Bought free spin 6: the fisherman wild collects the fish values on screen, BIG WIN $20.00, with two of four fishermen lit on the ladder. FluxPlays demo test, 28 October 2026.

Is Big Bass - Hold & Spinner worth playing?

Yes for the bonuses, no for the spins between them. The base game has no wild and nothing to collect, so it is a long walk to either feature, and the buys exist for exactly that reason. Once inside, you get a real choice: a coin round that builds in small, visible steps, or free spins where the ladder can multiply fish worth far more.

Pick Big Bass Bonanza if you only want the fisherman free spins, at low volatility with a 2,100x cap. Pick this one if you want the coin round as well and a much higher ceiling, at a slightly lower RTP.

In the demo, buy the Hold & Spinner first. It is the easier of the two rounds to read, and it shows how the respin count resets before you spend on free spins.