Big Bass Vegas Double Down Deluxe free spins: how the red and blue fisherman bonus works

How do you trigger the free spins?

Land at least three Hooked Bass scatters anywhere on the reels during a base game spin, and Pragmatic Play's own description says that trigger awards up to 20 free spins.

Two scatters are not always a dead end, because a random feature can kick in: the scatters shift and the reels respin, or a hook pulls up a reel to drag a third scatter into view. You cannot control when that happens, but it explains why some near misses turn into a bonus.

Free spins show up about once every 113 spins on average, and the ante bet, which costs 50% more per spin, raises the scatter rate. The strategy page works out whether that extra cost is worth it for you.

What happens in the base game while you wait

The base game is a waiting room with a few doors into the bonus. Knowing where the doors are keeps the long stretches from feeling random.

Line wins pay left to right on 10 fixed paylines. The fish show cash values, but those values are decoration until the free spins; in the base game a fish pays only as a line symbol. You will not see the fisherman on the base reels at all, so there is nothing to collect them.

The scatter is what you are really watching for, since three or more start the bonus. Two can set off the random feature that respins the scatter reels or hooks a reel up.

So watch a near miss to the end of the animation before you tap spin again.

Your other door is the ante bet, which costs 50% more per spin and makes scatters land more often, which shortens the wait at a higher price. The third door is the bonus buy, at 100x or 300x your bet, where your casino offers it.

How many free spins do you get? Sources disagree

The honest answer is up to 20 on the trigger, per the provider. Review sites print two different scales, and you should know that before you trust any single number.

The 10/15/20 scale matches both the provider wording and the classic Big Bass Bonanza rules. The other scale matches Big Bass Vegas 1000, a different game, which may explain the mix-up. Your casino's paytable screen is the final word, so tap the info button and check.

How do the red and blue fishermen work?

Each fisherman is a wild that also collects: when one lands, it adds up the value of every fish money symbol on the screen and pays it to you. If a red and a blue land together, both collect, so the same fish can pay twice.

Fish money symbols carry values from 2x to 5,000x your total bet. At a $1 bet, a screen with fish worth $2, $5 and $10 pays $17 to one fisherman, or $34 if a red and a blue land on the same spin.

Same fish, paid twice: that is the whole point of the Double Down name.

Each fisherman also feeds its own meter, and the meters never mix: a red fisherman never helps the blue meter, and the multiplier you earn on one fisherman applies only to the fish that fisherman collects.

With three retriggers per fisherman, both meters can add up to 60 extra spins between them. OLBG's data puts the ceiling at 80 spins in one bonus, which takes 24 fishermen and almost never happens.

One bonus round, step by step

Here is how a typical round unfolds, with made-up but realistic values on a $1 bet. In practice, most rounds stop long before the 10x level.

1. Trigger. Three scatters land and the free spins start. Both meters sit at zero and both multipliers at 1x.
2. Early spins. Fish worth $3 and $8 land, but no fisherman. They vanish unpaid, and the spin counts for nothing.
3. First collection. A blue fisherman lands next to fish worth $5 and $2, collects $7 and moves the blue meter to 1 of 4.
4. Double catch. A red and a blue land together with $10 of fish on screen. Each collects $10, so you get $20.
5. First retrigger. The fourth blue fisherman arrives, so you get 10 more spins and blue collections now pay 2x while red is still at 1x.
6. The finish. The spins run out with red at 3 of 4. Your total might land anywhere from a few dollars to a few hundred, depending on which fish showed up with which fisherman.

The lesson: the round is won by fishermen landing next to big fish, and by one fisherman reaching the 10x step. Two collectors raise your odds of both, but they do not make a small round impossible.

What do Dynamite, Bazooka and Hook do?

These random modifiers appear only during free spins, and each one fixes a specific bad outcome that would otherwise waste a spin. You cannot trigger any of them on purpose.

Dynamite fires when a fisherman lands but no fish values are showing. The provider describes it as the bottom reels being replaced with cash symbols, so the fisherman has something to collect.

Bazooka also fires when a fisherman lands without fish. It changes the other symbols on screen, and some of them turn into fish money for the fisherman to scoop up.

Hook covers the reverse case: fish on screen but no fisherman. A hook can pull a reel up to bring a fisherman into view, which saves those fish values from being wasted.

Think of them as rescue features: they make dead spins rarer, but the values they bring are random and often small.

They never lift the 5,000x cap.

How retriggers stack up over one long bonus

A retrigger extends the round and raises one fisherman's multiplier at the same time. Because the two fishermen climb separately, a long round can look lopsided: one fisherman at 10x, the other still at 1x.

The last row is the dream scenario and the ceiling OLBG publishes. Most rounds end somewhere in the first three rows, and the spins you gain late in a round are the valuable ones, because by then at least one fisherman pays at 2x or more.

One detail trips people up: scatters do not retrigger this bonus. Only fishermen move the meters, so watch the two counters, not the scatter symbol.

How super free spins change the round

Super free spins run on the same board with one rule bent in your favour: each side retriggers after 3 fishermen instead of 4, and you can only get them through the 300x buy.

That single change moves the whole ladder closer: a side reaches 2x after 3 fishermen, 3x after 6 and 10x after 9, where a regular round needs 4, then 8, then 12. Because both fishermen benefit, the chance that at least one of them ends the round at 10x rises noticeably.

The round also starts from at least 4 scatters, so the opening spin count sits at the upper end. None of this changes the fish values or the cap; it only makes the big multipliers show up more often, which is what the higher price pays for. The bonus buy page puts those prices in dollars.

Four mistakes players make reading the bonus

Most confusion about this game comes from habits carried over from other slots, and these four show up again and again in player forums.

Counting fish instead of fishermen. A screen full of $20 fish means nothing without a fisherman to collect it. The value of a spin is fish multiplied by the number of fishermen that land with them.

Expecting the multiplier to apply to everything. If blue is at 10x and red at 1x, a red collection pays at 1x. Watch which fisherman lands before you celebrate.

Judging the game on one bonus. A single round can end at 5x your bet or run past 500x. Ten rounds tell you much more than one, and the demo is the cheap place to watch them.

Treating super free spins as a different game. The rules are the same, and the 300x buy only guarantees 4 scatters and lowers the retrigger step from 4 fishermen to 3, which makes the 10x level easier to reach.

Where to go from the bonus rules

Knowing how the round works is half the picture. The other half is what it costs to get in and how big a round can get, and each has its own page so the numbers can go deep.

• Is the 100x or 300x buy worth your money?
• How big can one bonus get? The 5,000x cap explained
• Practise the bonus free in the demo