Fishing Slots
A fishing slot dresses the reels in rods, floats and fish, and the theme most often pairs printed fish values with a collecting fisherman.
Fishing themed slots
A fishing game dresses its reels in the gear of the sport, and the usual inventory is rods, reels, floats, tackle boxes and boats. Fish carry the money in most of these games, landing as symbols with printed stake multiples, whilst a fisherman symbol does the collecting.
The pairing is the theme’s signature. Fish behave as Cash Symbols and the fisherman behaves as a Collect Symbols trigger, most often during Free Spins. The best known run of games on the formula is the Big Bass series, and the pattern now appears across many studios.
A theme classifies the artwork rather than the arithmetic. These games ship on paylines, on ways and on counting grids, and their published figures move with the design of each game rather than with the subject on the reels. Two fishing titles can sit at opposite ends of the published RTP range.
The imagery does make one practical difference, which is that value collection is easy to follow on screen. A fish with a number on it either reaches the fisherman or it does not, and the rules behind that picture are short to read.