Epic Fish: Winter Catch Demo with the Golden Pollock

Snow on the reels, Adventure's numbers underneath

No Quickspin text calls this a reskin, but that is what it is. Put next to each other, the sheets agree on all four RTP cards, down to the split (base game 51.88% and free spins 44.19% on the demo's model), the volatility, the 24.51% hit rate and the top win on every model.

The changes are all on screen. Red and blue wooden houses stand in the snow above the reels, the card ranks carry caps of snow, the Bonus symbol is a red boat iced over, and the gold fish of the third round is a pollock.

Every Fish in view goes to the man in the red hat

The help screen gives the Wild two jobs. It replaces any symbol except the Bonus, and it "collect[s] FISH symbols whenever they land together on the reels", wherever they sit. Wilds pay 150x when five share a line. The Fish pays like a medium symbol on lines, where three of them earn 0.8x and five earn 10x; the rules list no values for its tags, and the ones we saw in the base game were worth 1x, 3x, 5x, 8x, 10x, 15x and 25x.

Unless a Wild shares the screen, a Fish earns nothing from its tag, and in our log that was the usual case: 232 of the 274 base screens with Fish had no Wild, against 42 that did and paid. Two Wilds collect every Fish twice. Spin 260, the top of our base game, worked that way: two Wilds took Fish worth 8x for 16x, and two line wins brought it to 18.4x.

Held Wilds are counted twice on the meter

During free spins a fisherman rows along a line of red buoys above the reels and passes a mark every 4 Wilds. Marks are worth +1 spin in Winter Spins and +3 in Golden Pollock, with Tight Lines between them at +2.

A second count appears in the help screens but not on Quickspin's game page. A Wild in either of the two dearer rounds stays for one more spin and is counted again on it.

Our natural Golden Pollock round, on spin 203, put the rule to work. Six Wilds landed, each was counted twice, and the meter reached 12, which paid all three marks and stretched the round to 21 spins. A Wild on free spin 19 moved nothing, as no mark was left. The five Winter Spins rounds, with no sticky Wilds, counted 7, 6, 3, 5 and 9 Wilds and lasted 13, 13, 12, 13 and 14 spins.

A 40x buy that landed five Bonus boats

The BONUS boat opens three cards, one for each round.

Each card has a one-line hint (extra spins for Winter Spins, sticky Wilds for Tight Lines, a growing Pollock for Golden Pollock), and the help screen shows the two cheaper labels to be modest. In its wording 40x buys "at least 3" Bonus symbols, which can mean any of the three rounds, 95x buys "at least 4" (the game page says exactly 4), and only 250x is sure of Golden Pollock. Quickspin prints no return figure for any of them.

The €40.00 purchase we made drew five boats, so the cheapest card opened Golden Pollock, and the meter took its 12 spins to 18 in two steps.

The Pollock first landed at 50x with no Wild to take it. On its second landing, at 75x, two Wilds were in view beside an 8x Fish.

Together they paid €166.00 on that spin. The Pollock then showed 100x with no Wild, and one Wild caught it at 150x for €150.00. The round closed on €340.60, 8.5 times its price, which one purchase cannot turn into a rule.

Spins 199 to 203: from the low to the best round

The log was made on 3 Nov 2026 at €1.00 a spin, without buys or Extra Bet, and its 500 paid spins returned €700.30, 140.1% of what we staked.

• 500paid demo spins at €1.00
• 24.8%of them paid something
• 216.5xbest spin, free spins round included
• 6free spins bonuses triggered

The low came after spin 199, at €4,928.30. Two Wilds on one Fish paid 17.1x on spin 200, Winter Spins followed on spin 201 for 62.8x, and spin 203 landed five Bonus boats. In that Golden Pollock round the gold fish came up at 50x, 75x and 100x. Held Wilds caught it at 75x and 100x, and the round paid 216.5x. Afterwards the balance never fell below €5,153.10.

Free spins supplied €383.50 of the return. In the base game, Fish collections brought €252.00 and ordinary lines €64.80. The other five rounds were all Winter Spins, paying 18.4x to 62.8x, and Tight Lines never turned up. Our hit rate of 24.8% sat close to the sheet's 24.51%.

Fourth of four, and the only one that repeats an older game

Of the four Epic Fish slots in Quickspin's portfolio, Epic Fish Adventure came first and this one last. All four use 5x3 reels with Fish-collecting Wilds, and in each, 3, 4 or 5 Bonus symbols pick one of three rounds.

Net Respins arrived with Epic Fish: Net of Fortune in February 2025, along with rounds of 7, 8 and 9 spins, volatility 3 and a 5,360.9x top.

Then, in September 2025, Epic Fish: Marlin Madness added a Black Marlin multiplier and rounds of 10, 12 and 14 spins, and raised the top to 7,673.8x. Winter Catch goes back to the original's higher volatility of 4.5 and its 12-spin rounds.

One more reskin of an Epic Fish game is reviewed here. Brawler's Brew (March 2026) puts Marlin Madness in an Irish pub and drops the Epic Fish name.

Fjord or Caribbean, when the twins play the same

Since no figure favours either version, the choice is about scenery. Luck is another matter. On the same maths this log returned 140.1% from six rounds and our Epic Fish Adventure log 80.3% from three, a spread that 500 spins can produce on their own.

Both builds are for players content to wait out long gaps between collects. What you play here is the 96.07% model. Casinos may install 94.19%, 92.07% or 87.15% instead, and some markets get no buy levels at all.

• Golden Glyph 2 review
• Epic Fish: Net of Fortune review
• Golden Glyph 3 review

Four questions from Gullfjord

All four rely on the game's help, its sheet or our two logs.