Play Demo
Land 3 scatters in Big Bass Hold & Spinner slot and the fishermen go to work in the free spins, sweeping up the cash-laden fish on the reels. Land 3 money coins instead, and a different door opens, the Hold & Spinner round, where the coins drop and respin for the values they hold. Two distinct bonuses off the same reels are something most of the series never hands you. This time the backdrop features a calm pond, and the cheerful fishing tune from past releases plays on, a touch retuned.
Get 3 money coins on the reels in a standard spin, and the Hold & Spinner round begins. The coins hold where they sit, the remaining symbols vanish, and you begin with 4 respins.
Land another money symbol and the count resets to 4; but if you draw a blank, the lives tick down to one, and the round ends once it reaches zero. Coins hold cash values up to 2,000x the bet. Whatever lands is added up and paid when the respins are gone. Despite the name, it works just like a hold and win round.
If you have played any other games in the Big Bass series, this second bonus needs no introduction at all. Land 3, 4 or 5 scatters and the free spins begin, with 10, 15 or 20 on offer. From there, the fisherman becomes a wild, and whenever one lands, it collects the value of all the money fish on the reels.
Wilds you bank remain for the round, and a 4th wild collected earns a retrigger. That adds 10 more spins and bumps the collection multiplier a step, to 2x, then 3x, then 10x on the third. The money fish values reach into the thousands of times the bet on the rarest of them.
Two assists can intervene when a collection stalls. If fish are on the reels but no fisherman to gather them, a hook swings in and pulls a fisherman up onto the grid. When the fishermen are there but no fish to collect, a bazooka fires over the reels and brings money fish in for them. The pair are carried over from past Big Bass games, though the visuals here are a clear upgrade, the bazooka in particular now gets a full reveal before it goes off.
Each bonus can be bought for 100x the total bet, with a button for the free spins and a button for the Hold & Spinner, so you can aim straight at whichever you fancy in the free play demo.
The Ante Bet toggle is the other way in, raising the stake by half to put more scatters on the reels, at the cost of switching the buy options off while it runs.
In Big Bass Hold & Spinner, a cash value on a symbol means nothing by itself, what counts is whether it sits on a coin or a fish. The gold coins are the money symbols of the main game, and a trio landing together triggers the Hold & Spinner round.
The fish carry their own values too, but they stay out of reach until the free spins, where only a fisherman wild can collect them. Fill the grid with money fish in regular play, and not one pays until the right bonus arrives.
The reels are a 5×3 grid with 10 fixed paylines running from the left, and only the float pays for two of a kind. Stakes cover $0.10 up to $375.00 a spin. The game returns 96.07%, nudging to 96.09% with the Ante Bet on. The volatility is high, and the top win is capped at 10,000x the bet.
| Symbol | 5 | 4 | 3 | 2 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Float | $200.00 | $20.00 | $5.00 | $0.50 |
| Fishing Rod | $100.00 | $15.00 | $3.00 | – |
| Dragonfly | $50.00 | $10.00 | $2.00 | – |
| Tackle Box | $50.00 | $10.00 | $2.00 | – |
| Fish (Money) | $20.00 | $5.00 | $1.00 | – |
| A | $10.00 | $2.50 | $0.20 | – |
| K | $10.00 | $2.50 | $0.20 | – |
| Q | $5.00 | $1.00 | $0.20 | – |
| J | $5.00 | $1.00 | $0.20 | – |
| 10 | $5.00 | $1.00 | $0.20 | – |
These are the in-game values at a $1.00 stake, with wins scaled by the bet per line.
The money symbols in the Hold & Spinner round carry values from 1x up to 2,000x the bet. The fish collected in the free spins follow their own ladder, climbing from 2x through to 3333x, 5000x and a top of 10,000x the bet on the scarcest of them.
Big Bass Hold & Spinner earns its 4 by handing the series something it rarely bothers with, an extra bonus mode. Most of them pour everything into a single free spins collection. This one keeps that round and bolts a hold and win beside it, so a quiet board can break either way, and at a buy you get to pick which one you chase. The trade is that neither bonus runs as deep as the best single-feature siblings, and the everyday spins are as low-event as the series always is. What carries it is variety and a real lift in presentation, which the line had been needing.
The headline draw is the second bonus. Keeping the classic free spins and adding a standalone Hold & Spinner gives a session two ways to pay off, and either can arrive from a flat-looking board. Its presentation is another big win, a clear step up on the older titles in both look and sound. A 10,000x cap also hands it more headroom than the 5,000x of several recent siblings.
Spread across two bonuses, neither goes as deep as one focused feature might. The free spins depend on the wilds, needing a good string of them before the multiplier counts for much. Away from the two rounds, the game is as quiet as every Big Bass before it, long stretches of small wins from the low symbols while you wait for a trigger.
The split is what gives Big Bass Hold & Spinner its character. The free spins are the part any Big Bass player knows, scatters in, fishermen netting fish, a retrigger after every 4th wild. The Hold & Spinner is the newcomer, set off not by scatters but by 3 coins arriving mid-spin, and it follows its own rules on its own screen. Having both means the main game is never aimed at just one thing, and a coin arriving carries as much weight as a scatter.
Our demo session found the free spins first, 3 scatters and the reels bubbling over into the round. The helpers showed up early, a hook on spin three pulling a fisherman onto the grid for an $8 collect, then the bazooka firing a red rocket over the reels and turning up five money fish for $30. A retrigger arrived with a couple of spins left, banking 10 more at a 2x multiplier that turned the next $10 collects into $20 apiece. It finished two fishermen short of the next unlock, on $80 from a $1 stake, in the session we played for this review.
The Hold & Spinner has a different feel the moment it starts. A fog horn sounds, the music quickens, and the view changes to the fisherman working a reel by hand, the line winding in with the sound to match. He flexes an arm whenever new coins land, one of the small touches the series does well. Our round held at 4 respins and came to $33, no jackpot, but enough to see how it plays out, the coins ticking over as the count reset and ran down.
Set above the surface this time, the pond has plenty going on. A frog puffs its throat on a lily pad off to the side, the logo and its dangling tackle bob at the top, and fish drift through the water behind the reels between spins. The graphics are the clearest upgrade over the older games, sharpest in the reworked bazooka sequence and the ripples spreading from the money symbols as they settle, while the audio keeps the bright, easy mood the whole series trades on.
Against two of our best-rated entries, the difference is focus. Big Bass Floats My Boat builds a multiplier on the individual reel positions through its free spins, and Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake strips its reels back to bare money values and a lone collector for the deepest single round the series has produced.
Hold & Spinner does not match that depth. It spends its effort on giving you two bonuses rather than one polished bonus, and with its high volatility, that variety is the smarter bet for anyone who tires of waiting on a lone trigger. It lands just behind that pair, but ahead of the earlier Big Bass originals.
