Slots Like Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King: Pick A Fish Upgrades and a Shared Crown Chase
Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King is Blueprint Gaming’s progressive-linked edition of its 2023 lakeside angling slot, running five reels, three rows and ten fixed paylines with a headline RTP of 95.00%. The base game is deliberately quiet. You are waiting on three or more bass scatters for a free spins round worth 10, 15 or 20 spins, and before those spins begin a Pick A Fish screen hands you upgrades such as extra fishermen, extra cash tags, collect multipliers or re-spins. Once the round starts, every fisherman that lands sweeps the cash values off all visible fish, and a milestone trail across the top of the screen keeps adding more picks and more free games with x2, x3 and x10 multipliers attached. Blueprint and the reviewers who have logged serious time on it place the volatility somewhere between medium and high. Stakes start at 10p, and the Jackpot King layer is the whole reason this edition exists: five Jackpot King Deluxe overlay symbols can land on any spin, sending you to a crown-collecting board and, if you fill it, the Wheel King and the shared Royal, Regal and Jackpot King pots. Anyone hunting slots like Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King is usually after that exact combination, a calm ten-line fishing grid with a network jackpot bolted on top.
Where to Play
18+ only. T&Cs apply. Please gamble responsibly.
How the Game Works
Reviewed by Paul StonePublished: July 2026.
Some operator links on this page pay us a commission if you sign up through them. Nothing in the score, the RTP figures or the criticisms below is influenced by that. Play only if you are 18 or over, set a deposit limit before you start, and stop when it stops being entertainment.
The grid is a plain 5×3 with ten paylines that pay left to right from reel one, which by 2023 standards is close to austere. Blueprint has not tried to disguise that. The reels sit half above and half below the waterline of a mountain lake, bubbles drift up the reel separators, and the whole presentation is built to feel unhurried. There are no cascades, no expanding grids and no base-game modifiers of the sort the studio piles into its King Kong Cash line. What you get between bonuses is card royals from 10 through Ace, a handful of tackle symbols, and the occasional fish landing without any cash value attached, because in this design the fish only turn into money once the free spins begin.
That restraint is a design choice rather than laziness, and it is the same choice Blueprint made with Fishin’ Frenzy years earlier. The base game exists to fund the bonus. Detailed testing published by reviewers who tracked thousands of spins puts the hit frequency at roughly one paying spin in six and the free spins trigger at roughly one in every 125 spins, so you should expect long, flat stretches where nothing much happens beyond small line wins clipping a fraction off the stake. If you dislike that rhythm, the ten-line grid will grate quickly. If you have played pub cabinets, it will feel entirely familiar.
The Jackpot King edition changes none of the reel mechanics. What it changes is where a slice of your stake goes. On a Jackpot King build, a portion of every wager is diverted into the shared pots that sit across the whole network, which is why the crown round can pay figures no stake multiplier on the paytable could ever reach. It also means the headline RTP number needs reading carefully, since the split between base-game return and jackpot contribution is not the same on every operator’s build.
Symbols and Paytable
The symbol set is small and easy to read. Card royals from 10 up to Ace fill most of the screen and pay very little, and above them sit four tackle symbols: the toolbox, the dragonfly lure, the fishing rod and the motorboat. The boat is the top standard symbol, with the rod just behind it and the dragonfly and toolbox level on the tier below. The green bass sits between the royals and the tackle in pay terms during normal spins.
Two symbols matter more than the rest. The bass scatter triggers the free games, and the fisherman functions as the wild. That wild is unusual in that it is confined to the bonus round, so during base-game spins there is nothing on the reels standing in for missing symbols. Published paytable breakdowns put the boat’s five-of-a-kind line win at around 200x stake, with the rod and the mid-tier tackle beneath that, though the exact coin values shift with the stake you select, so check the in-game paytable rather than trusting any figure quoted second hand.
Bonus Features Explained
Pick A Fish
Land three, four or five bass scatters and the game does not drop you straight into the spins. Instead a lake fills the screen and you choose one of the fish swimming across it. Behind each is an upgrade, and the pool includes more fish carrying cash tags, additional fishermen, a collect multiplier, a re-spin, or a straight award of extra free games. The choice is cosmetic in that you cannot influence what is behind each fish, but it does mean two bonus entries at the same trigger size can play out very differently, which is the point.
The Free Spins Round
Three scatters award 10 free games, four award 15 and five award 20. During the round, fish land carrying cash values and the fisherman collects the lot every time he appears. Above the reels a milestone trail tracks how many fishermen you have collected, and hitting the markers along it alternates between another Pick A Fish upgrade and a block of ten extra free games with a multiplier attached, climbing through x2 and x3 to x10 at the far end. Reaching the x10 marker requires a genuinely heavy run of fishermen, and most sessions will stop well before it, but the trail is what turns an otherwise ordinary collect round into something worth watching.
Jackpot King Deluxe
This is the feature the edition is named after and it is not tied to the fishing bonus at all. Five Jackpot King Deluxe overlay symbols can land across reels one to five on any spin, including a losing one. When they do, the reels are replaced by a dedicated crown-collecting board of 25 positions. Each crown you land nudges you up a prize ladder paying escalating bet multipliers, and filling all 25 positions opens the Wheel King, where the multiplier prizes sit alongside the three progressive pots. Those pots are the Royal Pot, the Regal Pot and the headline Jackpot King itself, and they are shared across every Blueprint game wired into the network, which is why the top pot can reach seven figures while the base game here tops out far lower. Two things are worth being blunt about: entry is entirely random, and reaching the wheel is rare.
Buy Bonus
Where the local regulator and operator allow it, the free spins can be bought for 100x the current stake. That is a fairly standard price for a Blueprint collector and it buys you the Pick A Fish screen as well as the spins. It does not buy any progress toward the Jackpot King board, and it is worth understanding that clearly before you use it. UK-licensed sites do not offer feature buys at all, so British players will only ever see this option abroad.
Pros and Cons
Pros
- The Pick A Fish screen genuinely varies bonus entries, so two three-scatter triggers rarely feel the same.
- The milestone trail with its x2, x3 and x10 free-game blocks gives the round a clear shape and something to chase.
- Jackpot King entry is stake-independent and random, so a 10p spin can open the crown board just as a large one can.
- A clean, readable 5×3 layout that runs well on a phone without hiding information behind menus.
- Blueprint’s audio and artwork here are a real step up on the older Fishin’ Frenzy builds.
Cons
- 95.00% is a weak published RTP for a 2023 release, and Blueprint also ships a 93% configuration that some operators run.
- The base game is close to featureless, with no wilds at all outside the bonus round.
- Roughly one bonus in every 125 spins means long dead stretches at any stake.
- Mechanically it is a reskin of Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Catch rather than a new idea.
- Sources disagree wildly on the ceiling, which makes it hard to judge what you are actually playing for.
Game Screenshot
A free spins round in progress on the Big Catch Bass Fishing engine that the Jackpot King edition runs on. The trail across the top reads Pick A, +10 Free Games X2, Pick A, +10 Free Games X3, Pick A, +10 Free Games X10, with the first Pick A step lit. Two upgrades are already banked at the left of the reels, marked +Fish and +2 Games. The fisherman sits on the third reel below a run of cash fish showing 10.00, 15.00 and three at 5.00, and the counter on the right reads 11/12. The cash values in this capture are printed without a currency symbol.
Demo Play
You can spin the game below without depositing. The demo uses play money and behaves the same way the real build does on the reels, though the progressive pots and their live values only exist on a funded account at a licensed operator, so the crown board in demo mode is a preview rather than a real jackpot chase.
Game Information
Expert Take
Reception has been polite rather than enthusiastic. The most detailed review of the base game scored it seven out of ten and made the fair point that the studio has essentially rebuilt Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Catch with sharper artwork, which is a reasonable summary of what is on offer. Players who like Blueprint collectors tend to enjoy it anyway, because the Pick A Fish layer does more work than it first appears to and the milestone trail keeps a long bonus interesting. The criticism that lands hardest is the published return. A 95.00% figure in 2023 was already behind the curve, and the Jackpot King wrapper does not fix that so much as redistribute it, moving some of the expected return away from the reels and into a pot most players will never win. If the progressive is not the reason you are here, the plain edition of the same game is the more sensible pick.
Similar Slots to Try
The closest relative of all. Blueprint reused this game’s collect-and-upgrade skeleton almost wholesale, so if the milestone trail here appeals, that is where the idea started.
Same lake, same fisherman, six reels of shifting Megaways instead of ten fixed lines. Pick it when the ten-line grid starts to feel narrow.
The other fishing entry plugged into the same shared pots. Worth a side-by-side session if you want to feel how the crown round behaves on a lighter base game.
A non-Blueprint take on the catch, where one expanding marlin does the heavy lifting rather than a meter. No progressive, but a far steeper stake multiplier at the top.
About the Developer
Blueprint Gaming has been part of the German Merkur Group since 2012, and the thing worth knowing about the studio in the context of this particular game is that it does not just make slots, it runs a jackpot network. Jackpot King is Blueprint’s own shared progressive system, and the studio decides which of its titles get plugged into it. That gives Blueprint something most suppliers do not have: the ability to take an ordinary ten-line game, attach a seven-figure pot to it, and turn a modest release into a lobby headline. Whether that is good for players is a fair question, since the contribution to those pots has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the return on the reels you are actually spinning. The studio holds a UK Gambling Commission remote software licence and ships most titles in more than one RTP configuration, so the number in one casino lobby will not always match the next. The full catalogue is on our Blueprint Gaming page.
The studio’s most copied idea and the reason a fisherman symbol sweeping cash fish now feels like a genre rather than one game.
Proof that Blueprint does not only do collectors. Expanding wilds and retriggering free games on a tight ten-line grid, with no meter in sight.
A Pay Anywhere sequel where Poseidon’s Call stretches the grid mid-spin. Shows the studio building a modern maths model rather than a cabinet tribute.
Blueprint at its most tongue in cheek, swapping a lake for an Alpine ski resort and running a diamond meter toward a 50,000x ceiling.
Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King Key Stats
Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King slot information last reviewed: July 2026
| Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King Slot Info | |
|---|---|
| Name | Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King |
| Provider | Blueprint Gaming (Merkur Group) |
| Developer Rank | Our estimate: 74th of the 154 Blueprint Gaming titles ranked on SlotsLike. The studio’s own network jackpot lifts the profile of this edition above the plain build, but a 95.00% return and a featureless base game keep it out of the studio’s upper third. |
| RTP | 95.00% headline. Blueprint also ships a 93% configuration, and on Jackpot King builds a slice of the return is diverted into the shared pots, so check the live game information screen before playing. |
| RTP Category | Medium-Low, inside our 94.00% to 95.99% band. At 95.00% it lands at the midpoint of that band, not the top of it. |
| RTP Rank | Lower half of the directory. Most 2023 releases we hold sit at or above 96.00%, so this one gives up around a percentage point before a single spin. |
| Feature Description | A Pick A Fish upgrade screen ahead of a fisherman-collect free spins round with a milestone trail, wrapped in Blueprint’s Jackpot King Deluxe progressive board. |
| Feature Categories | Free Spins, Money Collect, Buy Bonus, Progressive Jackpot |
| Reels | 5 |
| Rows | 3 |
| Paylines | 10 fixed, paying left to right |
| Volatility | Medium-High. Blueprint and the reviewers who have logged the most spins on it describe it as medium to high rather than either extreme. |
| Volatility Rank | Mid-table. The base game behaves like a medium slot; the Jackpot King board is what stretches the tail, and it is entered at random rather than earned. |
| Min Bet | £0.10 |
| Max Bet | £100 on the widest builds, though one database records a £10 ceiling and individual operators cap lower again. |
| Max Win | Sources disagree. The most detailed review puts the base game at 4,000x stake, while other databases list 10,000x and 50,000x for the same title. The Jackpot King pots sit outside all of those figures and are not expressed as a stake multiplier at all. |
| Release Date | Base game 29 June 2023. The Jackpot King edition was documented from July 2023, and one listing gives 3 July 2023. |
| Slotslike Rank | New listing, not yet ranked among our 4,300+ games (View Top 100) |
Slots with the Same Features
Progressive Jackpot Slots
Games where a network pot sits behind the reels rather than a fixed top prize. More of them are catalogued on our progressive jackpot page.
Another Blueprint title wired into the shared pots, with a wish-granting modifier set stacked in front of the crown round.
A louder, feature-heavy Blueprint sequel for players who find ten lines too quiet between bonus entries.
Fishing Theme Slots
The angling shelf is one of the busiest in the industry, and these three show how differently studios handle the same idea. Browse the rest on our fishing slots page.
The Reel Kingdom answer to the fisherman collect. Fewer upgrades, a tighter free spins round, and a much higher published RTP.
The Megaways rebuild of the original lake. Useful as a control test if you want to know how much of the fun here comes from the grid rather than the theme.
A deep-sea spin on the same collect idea, with a diver in place of the angler and modifiers that fire during the base game.
Bonus Buy Slots
If the 100x entry price here appeals, these three sit at different points on the same scale. Our buy bonus feature page lists more.
Buys and ante bets sit side by side here, so you can compare what a paid entry costs against simply raising the trigger rate.
A far heavier buy with a much wider outcome spread, for anyone who finds a 100x entry price too tame.
Blueprint’s own collect-to-trigger design, where the buy skips a base game that can otherwise take a long time to load the meter.
Frequently Asked Questions
How does the Jackpot King Deluxe bonus work?
Five Jackpot King Deluxe overlay symbols have to land across reels one to five, and that can happen on any spin at any stake, including one that pays nothing. The reels are then replaced by a board of 25 positions. Every crown you collect moves you up a ladder of bet multipliers, and filling all 25 positions opens the Wheel King, where the Royal Pot, the Regal Pot and the headline Jackpot King progressive are available alongside multiplier prizes. Nothing you do on the reels makes the trigger more likely.
How do the free spins trigger, and what is Pick A Fish?
Three, four or five bass scatters award 10, 15 or 20 free games. Before the spins begin you choose one fish from the Pick A Fish screen, which reveals an upgrade such as extra cash tags, extra fishermen, a collect multiplier, a re-spin or additional games. During the round each fisherman collects the cash values on every visible fish, and passing markers on the milestone trail hands out further picks and blocks of ten extra games carrying x2, x3 and x10 multipliers.
What is the RTP of Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King?
The headline figure is 95.00%, and Blueprint also supplies a 93% configuration that some operators choose to run. On a Jackpot King build part of the theoretical return is routed into the shared progressive pots instead of the reels, so the number shown in your casino’s game information screen is the only one that applies to the build you are on. Check it before you stake.
What is the maximum win on Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King?
This is the one fact we cannot give you cleanly. The most thorough review of the game states 4,000x stake, other slot databases list 10,000x, and at least one lists 50,000x. We have not been able to reconcile those, so we are reporting the disagreement rather than picking a favourite. Separately, the Jackpot King pots are progressive and are not capped as a multiple of your stake, so the theoretical top outcome on this edition is whatever the network jackpot stands at when it drops.
How volatile is Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King?
Medium to high. Roughly one spin in six returns something, but the free spins arrive around once every 125 spins, so the shape of a session is long quiet runs punctuated by one round that carries it. The Jackpot King board sits on top of that and is rare enough that it should not change how you plan a bankroll.
What are the best slots like Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King?
Start with Fishin’ Frenzy The Big Catch, which shares almost the same maths and feature skeleton, then try Big Catch Bass Fishing Megaways if you want the identical theme on a shifting six-reel grid. For the same progressive network on a different lake, Fishin’ Frenzy Jackpot King is the natural comparison, and Big Fin Bay covers the fishing theme from outside the Blueprint stable.
Can I play Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King free in a demo?
Yes. The demo embedded further up this page runs on play money, and the reel mechanics, the Pick A Fish screen and the free spins behave exactly as they do for real stakes. The one thing a demo cannot show you honestly is the progressive, since the live pot values only exist on a funded account at a licensed operator.
Who makes Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King?
Blueprint Gaming, the Newark-based British studio owned by the German Merkur Group since 2012. Jackpot King is Blueprint’s own shared progressive network rather than a third-party system, which is why the feature only appears on Blueprint titles.
Our Verdict on Big Catch Bass Fishing Jackpot King
Judge this as a slot and it is competent, familiar and a little too quiet, held up by a Pick A Fish screen that adds more variety to the bonus than the ten-line grid deserves. Judge it as a jackpot game and it makes more sense, because the crown board is the only part of the package that can pay anything genuinely large and it is available from the smallest stake on the slider. The problem is the price of admission. A 95.00% headline return is poor for a 2023 release, the jackpot contribution comes out of that same figure, and the base game gives you almost nothing to do while you wait. If you want the fishing theme and nothing else, the plain edition is better value. If the shared pots are what brought you here, this is a perfectly decent vehicle for chasing them, just go in knowing how rarely that board opens.
SlotsLike rating: 6.5/10