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With well over a dozen entries behind it, the Big Bass series takes an unexpected turn. Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake slot swaps the usual lakeside scenery for a submerged medieval kingdom, a sunken castle half-buried in silt, Excalibur embedded in rock beside the reels, and gothic letter symbols replacing the standard card faces. Pragmatic Play’s Reel Kingdom studio keeps the Fisherman Wild collection mechanic at the centre but wraps it in Arthurian mythology, giving the game a visual identity unlike any other entry in the series.
Where most Big Bass entries add a modifier or a new setting and leave the core alone, Golden Lake goes further. Its headline feature strips the regular symbols from the reels entirely, replacing them with a grid of money values, blank positions, and the Fisherman Wild as the sole collector. A multiplier trail builds across four retrigger levels to 10x, so every Fisherman that lands in the second half of a round carries significantly more weight than the first. It’s one of the most focused collection formats the series has offered, and the free demo gives full access to it
Three Scatter symbols trigger Free Spins and award 10 spins; four Scatters award 15; and five award 20. Before the round starts, you get to pick one card from 12 face-down options. Most of the deck activates the standard Free Spins round; two of the twelve reveal the Secrets of the Golden Lake card and redirect you to the premium variant instead.
In standard Free Spins, the Fisherman Wild appears on all reels and collects the value of every Money symbol visible on the grid when it hits. Fisherman Wilds accumulate throughout the round. Every fourth Fisherman activates a retrigger, adding 10 more spins and advancing the multiplier by one level. The four levels move from base play through 2x and 3x to a 10x maximum on the fourth retrigger, after which the round cannot be extended further.
In the Golden Lake variant, the regular symbols are stripped out entirely. The special reels contain only Money symbols, Fisherman Wilds, and blank positions. The round starts with 10 spins and uses the same retrigger structure as standard Free Spins: every fourth Fisherman collected adds 10 more spins and advances the multiplier through the same four levels. With Money symbols covering a much higher proportion of the grid than in the regular round, Fisherman Wild collection rates run significantly higher.
When two Scatter symbols land without a third, the game doesn’t immediately move on. The reels holding Scatters may shift down one position and respin, or an additional Scatter may appear in a random position after the initial spin settles. Neither is guaranteed; both are random events that can activate when two Scatters appear short of a third.
During any Free Spins round, further random events can also fire. These include new Money symbols appearing across the grid, a hook lowering to pull a Fisherman Wild onto a reel, and a curtain animation that replaces all symbols except Fisherman Wilds.
The Ante Bet toggle increases the bet multiplier from 10x to 15x, adding 50% to the cost of each spin, in exchange for more Scatter symbols appearing on the reels and a higher chance of triggering Free Spins naturally. The Buy Free Spins option is disabled while Ante Bet is active.
Two buy tiers are available when the Ante Bet is off. Paying 100x the total bet opens the card pick, with a chance of landing either the standard or Golden Lake round. Paying 270x skips the pick and enters the Golden Lake round directly.
The choice that shapes each session is the Ante Bet toggle, not the bet size itself. At $1, flipping it on raises the cost to $1.50 per spin and places more Scatter symbols on the reels, increasing natural trigger frequency. The trade-off is that the Buy Free Spins option is disabled while Ante Bet is active, so the two approaches cannot be combined in the same session.
The 5×3 grid features 10 fixed paylines, all paying from left to right starting at the leftmost reel. Bets range from $0.10 to $375.00. Wins from multiple payline combinations on the same spin are combined, but only the highest win on each line is paid. The Fisherman Wild appears exclusively during Free Spins and does not substitute during standard gameplay.
The Fishing Float is the only symbol that pays on two of a kind; all others require at least three to form a win. Values below are from the in-game paytable at a $1 stake.
| Symbol | 5 of a Kind | 4 of a Kind | 3 of a Kind | 2 of a Kind |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fishing Float | $200.00 | $20.00 | $5.00 | $0.50 |
| Dragonfly | $100.00 | $15.00 | $3.00 | — |
| Fishing Rod | $50.00 | $10.00 | $2.00 | — |
| Treasure Chest | $50.00 | $10.00 | $2.00 | — |
| Bass 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 | — |
Bass Fish Money symbols carry a random multiplier value that can only be collected by the Fisherman Wild during Free Spins. The possible values are 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 20x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500x, 1,666x, 2,500x, and 5,000x the total bet.
Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake carries an RTP of 96.07% across all modes, including the Ante Bet and both buy-in tiers. The maximum win is 5,000x the total bet. If a Free Spins round reaches the 5,000x cap, the round ends immediately and remaining spins are forfeited.
Stripped-back reels with only money values at every active position, a single collector, and a multiplier trail that builds to 10x across four retrigger levels, the Golden Lake free spins variant is as focused as the Big Bass formula has been. It's a coherent mode that justifies the buy-in on its own terms. Between features, the game is functional and dry, and the rest of the slot doesn't come close to matching it. Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake earns 4.0.
The underwater setting mixes fishing and Arthurian mythology in a way the series hasn’t tried before. Gothic letter symbols, a submerged castle visible on the horizon, and a sword embedded in the rock beside the reels give the visual identity a sunken medieval kingdom quality. The ambient track leans into the same register, a measured flute-led theme that holds until the Scatter sequence fires and the audio shifts entirely.
Regular spins follow the Big Bass template exactly. Money fish land with attached values throughout, but those amounts mean nothing outside the bonus. Between scatter appearances, the game is quiet, and 100 spins in testing, including a stretch with the Ante Bet active, produced no natural trigger. The near-miss system added some interest, with three two-scatter landings sending the holding reels back for a respin, though none of them completed a trigger.
The direct buy at 270x at $1 brings the Golden Lake round with a trumpet fanfare and a change in pace. The regular symbols clear and the grid becomes money values and blank positions, the Fisherman Wild the only other element that can land. On spin 2, a hook dropped from the top of the screen, pulled a Fisherman Wild onto the bottom reel, and collected everything visible for $90. Spin 4 brought another $55 from a second Fisherman working through a loaded grid.
Spin 8 delivered $150, and the first retrigger, adding 10 more spins at 2x. Spin 19 brought the second retrigger and 3x across 10 more spins. The round ended after 30 spins, returning $1,040 on a $1 stake, with the multiplied collections in the second half doing most of the work. The difference between a round that retriggers and one that doesn’t is written clearly across those numbers.
For players who’ve worked through the earlier Big Bass entries and want the series taken further, the Golden Lake round delivers. The multiplier trail, the stripped-back reel set, and the jump to 10x on the fourth retrigger level represent the series at its most concentrated. The dry sessions between bonus rounds remain part of the experience, while the 270x buy at $1 offers a way to access Golden Lake immediately.
