Play Demo
The name does the talking before the reels even spin. Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Catch Megaways is the Blueprint slot that lifts the fisherman-collect bonus from the Big Catch games and drops it onto a Megaways grid, and that splice is the whole pitch. Blueprint has run this fishing theme through more versions than almost anything else in its catalogue, so the rod, the tackle box and the boat scatter all look familiar the moment they land. What changes is the spread, with up to 15,625 ways where ten paylines used to sit. You can see whether that shift adds much in the free play demo.
Three or more fish on neighbouring reels from the left pay whatever their size, so a row mixing small and large fish still counts. Past that, the symbol set is the usual Fishin’ Frenzy crew, the pelican and the rod and reel up top, the life ring and tackle box beneath them, and the playing cards filling the rest. Wins build out from the leftmost reel, and with reels standing up to five high the total shifts on every spin.
Land 3 or more scatters and the free games begin. Three scatters give you 10 free spins to start, while 4, 5 or 6 scatters award 15, 25 and 50 spins respectively.
This round is where the theme comes alive, since every fisherman who lands turns wild and collects the value of each fish in view as it appears. With two fishermen showing, each fish value gets collected twice over. Each fish is tagged from 2x to 50x the stake here, so a grid full of large fish under a pair of fishermen is where the bigger wins sit.
Collecting 4 fishermen in one round sets off the Big Catch, which bumps the tiniest fish up a tier and hands over 5 more free spins. Keep collecting, and the smallest sizes keep rising toward the top fish, so a long round can lift the value of everything still to be swept up.
Each of the six reels shows up to 5 symbols, so the total runs anywhere up to 15,625 and resets on every spin. A win needs 3 or more matching symbols on reels next to each other, reading from the left, though any 3 fish pay regardless of size.
Bets cover 10p to £10, and the scatters have to land on their own to reach the bonus. Autoplay is there if you want it, and you can set a loss limit or a win limit.
This is a mid-variance game, a 3-out-of-5 on the in-game meter, and the top win reaches 50,000x the stake. The published RTP is 95.50%, with lower builds on some operators, so the paytable in the game confirms the figure where you play.
These values are multiples of your stake. The pelican tops the standard symbols, the rod and reel close behind, while the playing cards prop up the bottom.
| Symbol | 6 | 5 | 4 | 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pelican | 200x | 30x | 15x | 5x |
| Rod & Reel | 100x | 15x | 10x | 3x |
| Life Ring / Tackle Box | 50x | 10x | 6x | 2x |
| Fish (any size) | 10x | 5x | 3x | 1x |
| A / K | 5x | 2x | 1x | 0.5x |
| Q / J / 10 | 2.5x | 1x | 0.5x | 0.3x |
During the free games, the fish carry their own cash values, from 2x for the smallest up to 50x for the biggest, and the fisherman sweeps in every value on show. Scatters award free games, not coins, with 3 worth 10 and 6 worth 50.
Play one Fishin' Frenzy and you have played most of this, and that is what holds the score where it is. The Megaways spread lends a flutter of unpredictability the ten-payline games never had, and folding the Big Catch bonus into that grid is a sensible pairing, but neither idea is new to the series and the presentation has not moved on. It is a competent mash-up of two things Blueprint had already built, fun enough in the bonus, and the pick for anyone who wanted the Big Catch collect and the Megaways count in one game instead of choosing between them.
Fans of the series who want the Megaways layout without losing the same fisherman bonus. If the scatter and the rod-and-reel paytable already feel like home, this lands where you would expect. The medium variance is gentle, which keeps play ticking along rather than lurching, and that suits a casual, low-stakes sit-down.
Anyone hoping for a real step forward. The graphics, the audio and the bonus itself are lifted straight from earlier entries, so a Big Catch regular gets little that feels fresh beyond the bigger reel set. Players after a huge top end may also baulk at the wait, since only scatters open the bonus, and the 50,000x top end is reliant on the Big Catch upgrade, which needs all 4 fishermen to land in one free spins round. On paper, a fuller scatter haul up front helps, since the extra spins give more chances to gather the four. Even then, the fishermen are not a given, so it asks for a lot to go your way at once, and our session did not get there
Our session opened cold, a trickle of small wins while the Megaways reels reshuffled spin after spin. Like the other games in the series, there is no soundtrack to speak of, just the jingle of the reels and a splash as each win lands, so the underwater backdrop carries the mood on its own.
Two scatters teased the round more than once, with the music swelling each time, before a third landed around the fifty-spin mark. The 10 free games that followed started just as quietly, with nothing of note until the sixth spin dropped the first fisherman.
Spins seven and eight brought two more fishermen, sweeping in £12 and then £55 on top of a £7 pot, and the round closed at £76.60. One more fisherman would have set off the Big Catch upgrade, but we ran out of free spins to reach it.
Blueprint has split this brand into branches, and Big Catch Megaways is the one where two of them meet. Fishin’ Frenzy Megaways brought Megaways to the classic ten-payline game, while The Big Catch added the fisherman-upgrade bonus on the old layout. This release simply runs the second idea on the first, handy if you wanted both at once, but rarely a reason to come back on its own.
It is a gentler beast than what came later, too. The Big Catch 3 piles on an upgrade picker, a Power Play mode and four fixed jackpots, although the max win drops to 10,000x. Set against the rest of the series, our review lands it about where the originals did, a 3.2 that reads as a solid, familiar slot, not a fresh hook. If you have not played a Big Catch game, this is a fine place to start; if you have, the demo will tell you within a few spins how little has changed.
