Winter Fishing Club

Quick verdict: an ice-fishing game where most holes come up empty

Winter Fishing Club is a casual instant game from BGaming, released on 28 January 2025. It is a remake of the studio's earlier Fishing Club, rebuilt as a first-person scene on a frozen lake. There are no reels. You choose a hookbait, set a stake, cast into a hole in the ice and see whether a fish takes the bait. Each fish carries a multiplier, and bigger fish carry bigger ones.

The numbers behind that simple scene are what make the game interesting. BGaming lists an RTP of 97.16%, a Medium-low volatility, a top multiplier of 3,000x and a hit rate of 5.4. That hit rate means most casts pay nothing, so the value is concentrated in the casts that do land something. The three hookbaits change how that value is shared out, and that is where most of the thinking in this game happens.

Winter Fishing Club spec sheet

Anatomy of a single cast

BGaming's official page sets out the round in a few short steps. Here is how it works, in order.

1. Pick a hookbait. The baits sit on the left side of the screen. Each one is a risk level, shown as 1, 2 or 3 stars.
2. Place the stake. BGaming says each of the three risk levels has "its own list of stake options", so the stakes available change with the bait.
3. Cast. The rod goes into the icy water. BGaming's news release says you can see schools of fish moving under the ice and the rod reacts when a fish bites.
4. Wait for the result. A fish may take the bait and get landed, which awards its multiplier. BGaming also notes that sometimes a fish will ignore the bait or slip off the hook just before it is landed.
5. Settle. A landed multiplier is applied to the stake and collected automatically. If nothing is landed, the cast returns nothing and the stake for that cast is gone.

The thing to notice is what's missing. Nothing in BGaming's description gives you a decision during the cast. You don't choose when to reel in or when to collect. The game is sometimes filed alongside crash games, but the official rules describe no step where you stop a rising multiplier. Every choice you make happens before the rod goes in.

You can play one cast at a time in Manual mode or use Auto mode. Auto mode is commonly described as letting you fix the stake and the number of casts in advance, so the game repeats the same setup without a press for each cast. It changes nothing about the odds of any single cast; it only removes the button press between them.

The 5.4 hit rate: reading the most revealing number on the page

BGaming publishes a "Hit Rate" of 5.4 for Winter Fishing Club. The studio doesn't define exactly what counts as a hit, but the figure is usually read as a frequency of 1 in 5.4. Reading it that way, about one cast in every 5.4 lands a paying catch, and the other casts land nothing.

Put in percentages, 1 divided by 5.4 is roughly 18.5%. So a little under one cast in five lands a fish, and a little over four in five come up empty. Over 100 casts, that works out to around 18 or 19 catches on average, with the rest of the holes quiet. Real sessions will scatter around that figure, sometimes by a lot, because each cast is a separate event.

That changes how to think about the 97.16% RTP. If roughly 1 cast in 5.4 pays, and the game returns 97.16% over the long run, simple arithmetic says a paying catch has to average around 5.25x the stake (0.9716 multiplied by 5.4). That figure is our calculation from BGaming's two published numbers, not a value BGaming quotes. It still shows how the maths works. Individual catches can be small, but they need to average about five times the stake to make up for all the empty holes.

In practice, that has three consequences:

• Long runs of empty casts are normal. They don't mean anything is wrong, and nothing makes a catch "due". Each cast is independent.
• Small catches are not the whole story. The smallest fish are widely reported to pay less than 1x. The average only works because some catches are much larger.
• The single-cast format makes those runs very visible. A slot hides empty spins among animations. Here you watch an empty hole every time.

It also helps to separate two ideas the hit rate can blur together. A "hit" is a cast that lands a fish. It is not the same as a cast that returns more than the stake. If the smallest fish pay under 1x, some hits still leave you behind on that cast. The share of casts that finish ahead of the stake is therefore lower than 18.5%, although BGaming doesn't publish that figure.

Choosing a hookbait: stake lists and catch odds by star rating

The three hookbaits are the game's only real setting beyond the stake. BGaming says higher levels "promise bigger catches". The risk level is also widely reported to set the minimum stake, with the higher-star baits trading a lower chance of a successful catch for bigger potential multipliers.

The stake range for each bait is commonly listed as follows:

Two details in that table are worth noticing.

First, each bait keeps the same ratio between its lowest and highest stake. 16 divided by 0.20, 48 divided by 0.60 and 80 divided by 1.00 all come to 80. The top and bottom of each range move up together.

Second, the lowest stake climbs with risk. The 2-star bait's minimum is three times the 1-star minimum, and the 3-star minimum is five times it. You can't use the high-risk bait at the smallest stake the game allows. The overall stake range usually quoted for the game, 0.20 to 16, matches the 1-star bait.

One more detail supports the 3-star range. BGaming's official page lists a maximum win figure that divides by 3,000 to give exactly the top stake of the 3-star bait. That suggests the 3,000x ceiling is measured against the largest high-risk stake.

BGaming hasn't published a separate multiplier table or hit rate for each bait, so we can't give exact odds for 1, 2 or 3 stars. The RTP is widely reported to vary only very slightly between risk levels, between 97.15% and 97.16%. In other words, the bait mainly changes how the return is spread, not how much of it there is.

A simple way to picture the three choices: all three baits aim at roughly the same long-run return, but they divide it differently. The 1-star bait leans towards more frequent, smaller catches. The 3-star bait leans towards fewer catches with more weight in the big fish. The 2-star bait sits between them. Since BGaming's single 5.4 hit rate is a game-level figure, the real catch frequency on the 3-star bait is likely lower than 1 in 5.4 and on the 1-star bait higher, but the studio doesn't publish the split.

Thirteen fish and the multipliers they carry

BGaming's own description stays general: fish of different sizes and colours carry multipliers, and bigger fish carry higher values that reach over x100. The top possible multiplier is 3,000x.

The lake is widely reported to hold 13 fish species. Four of the larger ones are commonly named with these multiplier bands:

The smaller species are usually grouped at the bottom of the ladder, paying from nothing up to a few times the stake. Some listings give a slightly different range for the smallest fish; either way they sit well below the trout. None of these values come from an official BGaming paytable, so treat them as a guide to the general ladder rather than exact rules. We haven't found reliable names for the remaining species, so we won't list them.

What everyone agrees on is the order. Size equals value. A small fish near the bottom of the ladder may return less than the stake, while the catfish at the top is the fish linked to the largest multipliers.

How to read the fish ladder

The bands above leave a clear gap between the small fish and the trout. That gap is the practical shape of the game. Most catches, by the logic of the hit rate, come from the lower end, and they do little more than soften the empty casts. The trout, pike and catfish are where a session changes direction.

Remember the 5.25x average worked out earlier. A ladder where most fish pay only a few times the stake can only reach that average if the upper fish land often enough to pull it up. So when a 30x or 50x fish appears, it isn't a bonus on top of the maths; it is part of what the 97.16% figure already assumes.

RTP 97.16% and Medium-low volatility in practice

BGaming's figure of 97.16% RTP is the long-run theoretical return. Across a very large number of casts, the game is designed to return 97.16 units for every 100 staked. The difference, 2.84%, is the house edge. It says nothing about a single session, which can land well above or below that average.

The volatility label is Medium-low on BGaming's page and in its launch news. Some listings rate it Low or Low-Medium instead; the game plays the same either way, and we keep BGaming's own label.

How does Medium-low fit with a game where most casts land nothing? The cap and the fish ladder explain it. The top multiplier is 3,000x, which is modest compared with many slots, and most paying fish sit in the low-to-middle bands. Results are uneven from cast to cast, but they don't swing as far as a game built around rare 10,000x-plus events.

It is worth being precise about what volatility measures here. It describes how widely results spread around the 97.16% average, not how often a cast lands something. A game can have a low hit rate and still be only Medium-low in volatility if the catches it does land are mostly moderate. That is the profile BGaming describes for Winter Fishing Club: frequent empty holes, mostly mid-sized catches and a ceiling that is high but not extreme.

BGaming doesn't publish a lower-RTP version of Winter Fishing Club, and the game is consistently listed at 97.16%.

The 3,000x catch and how it is reached

The maximum win is 3,000x the stake, confirmed on BGaming's official page. It comes from a single catch. There is no feature that stacks multipliers across casts, no bonus round and no way to add value after a fish is landed.

BGaming describes the big fish as carrying values that reach "over x100", and the catfish is commonly placed at 100x and above. The official material doesn't say exactly which fish carries 3,000x or which bait is needed to reach it. Since BGaming says higher-risk baits "promise bigger catches", the 3-star bait is the most likely route to the top of the ladder, but we can't confirm that the other baits exclude it.

Because the top result is a single catch rather than a build-up, there is nothing to track as you play. No meter fills and no feature gets closer. The 3,000x fish is as likely on your first cast as on your five-hundredth with the same bait.

Winter Fishing Club versus the original Fishing Club

BGaming calls Winter Fishing Club a remake of Fishing Club, which launched on 11 June 2024. The core maths is the same, but the presentation and risk options changed.

The biggest practical change is the drop from five risk levels to three. BGaming's news release says the remake has fewer risk levels based on player preferences. The original lets you pick from five tiers on the left-hand menu, with higher levels giving better chances of big wins. Three baits make the choice quicker to understand, though they give less fine control.

The release also highlights several design changes:

• A first-person view. The scene is shown from the point of view of the character at the ice hole. BGaming's CPO Yulia Aliakseyeva said the casual direction and first-person view make it stand out among fishing games.
• Shorter animations. Each cast resolves faster than in the original.
• More realistic touches. Schools of fish move under the ice, the rod reacts to bites and fish can slip the hook.

If you already know Fishing Club, the rules will feel the same. The same RTP, volatility and 3,000x top result carry across. What you give up is two risk tiers, and what you gain is a faster, more focused scene.

Best Win, Best Catch and the trophy wall

Winter Fishing Club doesn't have a bonus round, but it does track two personal records. BGaming shows them as snapshots on the right side of the screen:

• Best Win is the highest amount won from a single cast.
• Best Catch is the highest multiplier caught.

The two can point to different casts. Best Win depends on the stake, so a modest fish on a large stake can top it. Best Catch ignores the stake and records only the multiplier, so it is the better guide to how far up the fish ladder you have reached.

Big catches are also widely described as appearing as trophies on the wall of a lakeside cabin. These records don't change the maths. They don't raise multipliers or improve the odds of later casts. They are simply a record of what you have landed so far.

Who Winter Fishing Club suits

• Players who like simple, quick rounds. A cast is one decision and a short animation.
• Anyone who wants to adjust risk without a long rules page. Three baits and a stake list are the whole setup.
• Fans of the original Fishing Club who found five risk tiers too fiddly.
• Not ideal for players who dislike long runs of empty results. With a hit rate of 5.4, empty casts are the most common outcome.
• Not ideal for anyone wanting in-round decisions such as choosing when to collect. The official rules describe none.

What Winter Fishing Club gets right, and where it falls short

Pros

• The published 97.16% RTP is high for an instant game.
• The three hookbaits make the risk choice easy to read.
• Shorter animations and Auto mode keep sessions moving.
• BGaming publishes a hit rate, which few studios do for games like this.

Cons

• Most casts land nothing, which can feel slow even at Medium-low volatility.
• BGaming doesn't publish official fish multipliers or odds for each bait.
• The 3,000x cap is the same as the original, so the remake doesn't raise the ceiling.

Winter Fishing Club FAQ