Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler Slot (Pragmatic Play)

The Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler slot plays on a grid with 3 reels and 3 rows, which is a smaller grid than usual, and there are 5 paylines available.  Winning combinations are formed when you land 3 matching symbols which land from left to right, beginning from the leftmost reel without a gap.

Bets for this game start at 10p and go up to £250. You can use the plus and minus symbols to toggle between the bet amounts on desktop and via the coins symbol on mobile. Non-UK players can utilise the Autoplay function which goes up to 1,000 spins, and the quick spin function, where you can play faster.

The RTP rate is 96.50% which is above the online average of 96%. There are also rates of 95.50% and 94.50% available, so shop around to find the best RTP. The game has a base game hit frequency of 13.30%, which is, on average 1 in 7.45 spins. The Free Spins feature has an average hit frequency rate of 1 in 114 spins.

Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler has a high volatility rating of 4 out of 5 and a max win of 5,000 x the bet. The max win hit frequency rate is on average 1 in 7,226,879 spins.

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🍀 Bingo is Jenny's first Love, and time with Gala Bingo sits on her CV. She has become an expert with online slots, completing hundreds of our various new slot reviews and creating and writing some of the slot articles found on the site.

The Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler slot transports you under the sea. If you've played the previous Big Bass games, you’ll recognise the familiar underwater setting with vibrant fish, gently swaying seaweed, and bubbles rising to the surface.

The game features upbeat, jingly music, with ambient sounds like bubbles and classic slot machine pings and zings. On the reels, you’ll find symbols familiar from the other games, including a variety of fishing gear. The highest-value symbol is the fishing float, which awards 100x your bet for 3 matching symbols. 

Here’s a breakdown of the symbols featured on the grid:

• Q/J/10/K: 3 = 100 x bet
• A: 3 = 1 x bet
• Fish: 3 = 2 x bet 
• Tackle box: 3 = 5 x bet
• Dragonfly: 3 = 10 x bet
• Fishing Rod: 3 = 30 x bet
• Fishing Float: 3 = 100 x bet
• Fisherman Wild: Substitutes for all symbols apart from the scatter
• Scatter: 3+ trigger the Free Spins feature
• Money: Worth up to 5,000 x bet + collected in base game randomly & during free spins
  
  

Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler Mobile

The Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler slot is available across all mobile, tablet, and desktop devices, including iOS and Android smartphones. You can play the game in either portrait or landscape mode, and it plays superbly. However, for the ultimate gaming experience, playing on a desktop is highly recommended.

The Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler slot offers 4 bonus features: Money symbols, Free Spins, Buy Free Spins, and an Ante Bet feature.

Money Symbols

The fish-paying symbols are also money symbols and are featured in all Big Bass slot games. At every spin, the fish take a random value that can be won. Possible values are 2x, 5x, 10x, 15x, 25x, 50x, 100x, 200x, 500 x, 1666x, 2500x or 5,000 x the bet.

There are also 2 random features that can trigger during the base game:

• Stacked symbol: a random paying symbol can appear fully covering reels 1 and 2 with instances of the same symbol. 
• Hook: A hook can appear, bringing into the screen 1, 2 or 3 scatters, which will then trigger the Free Spins feature, which I’ll tell you about next.

Free Spins 

Landing 3 or more scatters triggers the Free Spins bonus feature, where you’re awarded 10 free spins. You can earn 1 extra free spin for every scatter shown on the top and middle rows of the triggering spin. 

During the feature, each wild collects all the values from money symbols on the screen. All wild symbols that land are collected above the grid until the end of the round. Each 4th wild symbol collected retriggers the feature, awards 10 more free spins and the multiplier for money symbol collection increases 2x for the first trigger, 3x for the second trigger, and 10x for the third retrigger. After the third retrigger, it can’t be retriggered.

There are 3 random features that can occur during the Free Spins:

• Dynamite spin feature: When there are wilds on the screen but no fish at the end of the free spin, fish money symbols can appear in random positions. 
• Hook feature: When there are fish symbols on the screen but no wilds, at the end of a free spins, a hook will appear, pulling a random reel up to bring wild symbols onto the screen. 
• Bazooka feature: When there are wilds on the screen but no fish, a bazooka animation can appear, and all of the symbols on the screen can be changed from the wilds to something else.

Buy Free Spins

If you’re non-UK-based, the Free Spins round can be instantly triggered from the base game by buying it for 100x current total bet.  This means that 3 scatters will land.

There is a second option where you can pay 300x bet to trigger the Super Free Spins feature; during this only 3 wild symbols need to be collected in order to retrigger the feature, and the multiplier for the 3rd retrigger is 20x.

Ante Bet

You have the option to increase your bet by 15% to increase your chance of triggering entry into the Free Spin round, as more scatters will be present on the reels. There is also an option to increase your bet by 10% to increase your chances.

I always try to keep an open mind when reviewing slot games, understanding that tastes vary, but I have to be honest: Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler felt like a mixed bag. There’s less theme or storyline here, and it feels more like a ‘pocket-sized’ Big Bass game with its smaller 3x3 grid and a limited number of paylines.

On the positive side, the game includes an entertaining Free Spins feature, with the familiar progress meter above the grid, where you advance by collecting wilds. As you collect wilds and move up the meter, you retrigger another 10 spins and higher multipliers. There are also random features similar to those found in other Big Bass games, including the classic hook action that pulls up a reel to add wild symbols to the screen. During testing, the bazooka feature triggered a few times, which looked impressive on-screen.

There are other perks as well. For instance, compared to the last release Big Bass Xmas Xtreme, where money symbols maxed out at 1,000x, this game boosts them to 5,000x. The RTP is also respectable at 96.50%, which is above the industry average of 96%.

Pragmatic Play has increased its production pace for Big Bass slot games, with the last two releases only 28 days apart, whereas prior releases were spaced more sporadically, between 24 and 200 days. The volatility rating here is slightly lower than most of the Big Bass games, which usually score 5 out of 5. This game is rated 4 out of 5, joining only 4 others in the series with this rating, including the original Big Bass Bonanza.

I was surprised to see that this game has just 3 reels, as that's less common nowadays, with most slots featuring at least 5 reels. Interestingly, the very first slot machine produced in the late 19th century, the Liberty Bell, was a 3-reel game. We cover this in our OLBG guide to the history of online slots.

Overall, Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler is definitely less razzle-dazzle than others in the series. Perhaps it’s aimed at players looking for a quick, straightforward game? Unfortunately, I feel a bit of Big Bass fatigue with this release, as it doesn’t distinguish itself from others in the series. You can find similar features in other Big Bass games that are more engaging. For these reasons, I’m giving it a 3 out of 5.

The Big Bass Bonanza 3 Reeler slot review was written by our slot game experts on the OLBG Expert team. Beginning with Jenny Mason, our prime Slot reviewer who has 17+ years of experience in iGaming, working for top UK brands. Jenny is an expert in slots and bingo. It was then verified by Chris Taylor from our OLBG Expert team, who has written over 10,000 slot game reviews in an iGaming career spanning over 2 decades.   

Chris Taylor

The King of Slots

Chris Taylor is an industry veteran originally from Gibraltar. Having worked in the online gambling industry since 2004, Chris loves slots and has reviewed over 10,000 online slot games. Running a slots-focused website for 13 years, Chris is the go-to guy for everything slots-related. 

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Chris’ online gambling career has spanned more than 2 decades. This includes working for online casino sites, consulting for software/slot providers and running his own slots portal. 

With a passion for slots, Chris reviews games from an honest and blunt point of view to give readers an accurate portrayal of the slots they might play. The slot games are just the start as Chris deep dives into the slot sites to provide factual and insightful information as to where to play the games he so loves.