Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake Slot

The original Big Bass Bonanza was an absolute revelation and became an instant classic. So, understandably, Pragmatic Play has been milking that cash cow ever since, with so many sequels and spin-offs that I’ve frankly lost count. And now the provider has come up with what seems to be the most ridiculous iteration yet, with Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake.

The slot has a fantasy medieval theme, mixed in with the usual fishing setting. Yes, that’s right, Pragmatic Play has decided to weave an Arthurian tale into the setting, using the Golden Lake as an excuse to create a medieval fishing trip. It’s as weird as it sounds and while the provider has made an effort to adapt backdrops, animations and symbols to match the theme, it’s still very odd.

Gameplay remains largely similar to what we usually get from these games with mechanics like free spins, money symbols, wild collector symbols and win multipliers. Read on below to find out more about these key features.

⚡ RTP	96.07% | 95.07% | 94.07%
🎲 Volatility	High
💰 Paylines	10
🔼 Maximum Bet	0.20
⭐ Bonus Features	Wild Symbols, Scatter Symbols, Money Symbols, Free Spins, Win Multipliers

Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake Slot Game Free Demo

Rather than jumping straight into the real money version of the game, I suggest plating the Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake free demo first. This gives you the space to test out all the game’s features without risking any of your funds. You can see how the base game and free spins mechanics work and even decide on an appropriate bet level that suits your gambling budget.

Where Can I Play Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake for Real Money?

Many excellent online casinos offer Pragmatic Play games, including Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake as part of their varied library. But if you need help finding a place to play the slot, check out my list of the best Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake online casinos.

All the sites that I’ve included here feature the online slot and offer a great variety of rewarding promotional offers, as well as robust customer support. They also run on licenses from trusted gambling regulators and have strong security features using the latest in encryption technology.

Pro Tips:

Video slots aren’t the sort of games you can get better at by mastering any particular strategies. But you can use good bankroll management to make the most out of your budget and potentially score more wins. Keep in mind that this is a very highly volatile slot. That means it can take a very, very long time for bonus features and big wins to come your way. I had to spin through more than 250 regular spins before I got my first free spins trigger and had to wait through similar periods to get additional triggers.

So, your best strategy here is to pick a relatively low bet level, which will get you a lot more spins. The more spins you have, the better your chances of triggering the bonus features and claiming the slot’s biggest prizes.

Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake Slot Bonus Features

The Golden Lake holds all kinds of secrets, and you’ll discover them across five reels and three rows which put together 10 winning paylines. To score a winning combination, you’ll need a minimum of two identical, adjacent symbols, starting from the leftmost reel. The more symbols you manage in a combination, the bigger the payout.

You can also make use of a couple of helpful functions like the turbo mode and autoplay feature which speed up your spins and automatically spin through the game, respectively.

The bottom of the paytable is taken up by royal card symbols from 10 to A and these can score you wins of anywhere between 5x to 10x your stake for five of a kind symbol combination. Further up the ladder, you get a tackle chest, dragonfly, reel and float symbols. These give you much bigger payouts ranging from 20x to 200x your stake for five identical symbols.

Cash and fisherman symbols play a crucial part in the game too, but they form part of the slot’s special features, which I’ll cover in more detail below.

Wilds

Wild symbols are exclusive to the free spins bonus and these tokens step in for any missing pay symbols that can form part of a winning combination. They also boost existing wins, helping you reach for even bigger payouts.

Although they don’t have a pay value of their own, they can claim the money values associated with fish money symbols and award them immediately.

Money Symbols

Fish money symbols are a crucial part of Big Bass games and these tokens pop up in both the base game and free spins. During regular spins, they behave like normal pay symbols and you could score a payout of 20x your stake for five identical symbols. They still land with random money values, but these cannot be claimed during the base game spins.

Once you get into free spins, the fisherman wild symbols landing in conjunction with money symbols automatically gather and award their money values.

Scatter Symbol

Scatter symbols are your key to free spins and you’ll need a minimum of three symbols to activate the bonus rounds. Scoring three, four or five scatter symbols activates 10, 15 or 20 free spins, respectively.

If you manage to score two scatter symbols in a round, a respin is triggered, where reels with scatter symbols are held while the rest spin in an attempt to land more scatter symbols. The hook feature might also randomly trigger, and a hook will pull up an additional scatter symbol and add it to the rest. Scatter symbols do not land during the free spins bonus, they also have no value of their own.

Free Spins

As soon as you activate your free spins bonus, you’re presented with a mini-game that has you picking from a selection of face-down cards. This will either reveal a regular bonus round or the boosted Golden Lake Free Spins bonus.

In the regular free spins bonus, fisherman wilds begin to land, collecting values from money symbols in view. The fisherman symbols themselves are also collected and they’re added to the bonus meter at the top of the reels. Every fourth fisherman symbol you collect awards you with an additional 10 free spins as well as a win multiplier for money symbols which goes from 2x to 3x and eventually caps at 10x. Once you get to the fourth level and the 10x multiplier, you cannot boost your spins further.

The Golden Lake Free Spins bonus takes a different turn. Instead, all pay symbols are removed from the reels and you can only land blanks, fish money symbols or fisherman wilds. The rest of the setup is similar to regular free spins, including the bonus meter, additional free spins and win multipliers. Of course, you get a much better chance of claiming money symbol values here, even if you have no chance at all of scoring regular wins.

You also get a couple of random features to help you with your money symbol collection. In both free spins options, if you land fisherman symbols but no money symbols, some of the latter can randomly pop up on the reels. Similarly, if you have money symbols and no fisherman symbols, an animated hook will pull up a fisherman symbol to help you claim your prizes. Should you have a fisherman symbol on the grid with no money symbols, all other symbols on the reels may be transformed into a different token.

Buy Bonus

Those of you who want to improve your chances of triggering free spins or even jumping straight into the bonus modes will want to have a look at the slot’s buy bonus options.

First up is the ante bet, which increases the cost of your bet by 50% but also increases the likelihood of landing scatter symbols on the grid. This improves your odds of activating free spins.

Next up is the free spins bonus buy which costs 100x your stake and will award you a random number of scatter symbols with which you can trigger regular free spins or Golden Lake free spins. Lastly, you get the Golden Lake free spins bonus buy option which throws you straight into the boosted bonus mode for the price of 270x your bet.

RTP & Volatility of Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake Slot

Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake carries on the Big Bass tradition of having a high level of volatility leading to scarcer wins and special feature triggers. You’ll need to be pretty patient if you want to land a big win, but with a maximum win cap of 5,000x you can manage to score some satisfying prizes.

RTP on the other hand comes in different rates, depending on the version of the online slot you’re playing. You get iterations of the game with 96.07%, 95.07% and 94.07%. I suggest finding an online casino with the 96.07% version as this gives you the best experience possible.

The online slot is developed by Pragmatic Play, one of the biggest providers in the online casino industry. The studio has a great track record for creating fair and safe games, so you can enjoy Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake, knowing that it’s a legitimate video slot. Even so, I suggest playing at an online casino with a strong reputation too, ideally a site that runs with licenses from top gambling regulators such as the MGA and UKGC.

Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake Slot on Mobile

You can keep fishing in these fantasy-riddled waters wherever you go, thanks to the online slot’s excellent mobile compatibility. The game can be fired up from your favourite mobile browser across both Android and iOS platforms running on smartphones and tablets. The interface changes slightly to favour smaller screens and touchscreen controls. But other than that, the rest of the slot remains unchanged, offering the same graphics, features and win potential.

Conclusion

The Big Bass series has been suffering from fatigue for a while now and that only seems to be getting worse with each new release. The themes get wackier, the features remain quite similar, and the win potential doesn’t dazzle all that much either.

Big Bass Secrets of the Golden Lake seriously nails this point home. The setting never really works and while there are some interesting features at play, including the Golden Lake bonus mode, these mechanics don’t quite hit the way they should. The base game is very bland, and the high level of volatility means it can take forever to get to the good stuff.

But the most disappointing factor here is the fact that even if you manage to get the bonus features running and put together a strong win multiplier, the win potential isn’t all that amazing. Sure, 5,000x max win potential can lead to some decent rewards but you’ll find slots with similar volatility settings that deliver a much better potential outcome.

Pragmatic Play’s medieval fishing spin-off isn’t quite the chivalrous tale it set out to be, with a strange theme, lacklustre features and uneven math model.