The fish
Lil’ Blues, Big Oranges and Huge Reds
Seven segments out of 53 open the ice. Each costs you a little return for a much larger ceiling — here is exactly how much, and what each round is like to sit through.
Four segments
Lil’ Blues — the everyday bonus
Four segments means this opens roughly once in every thirteen rounds, which over an hour is around seven appearances. The host casts into the hole and pulls up small blue fish carrying 3x to 100x.
Because it triggers so often, the distribution has to sit low. Expect a run of single-digit and low double-digit catches with the occasional jump, and treat the 100x as a tail event rather than a target. It is the cheapest bonus to run and the only one where a modest bankroll sees enough hits for the game to feel like a game rather than a wait.
Two segments
Big Oranges — the middle setting
Half the frequency, double the ceiling, 4x to 200x. Larger fish need the crane, which is where the production earns its keep and where the pause before the reveal does its work.
The interesting part is the price: 95.60% against Lil’ Blues at 95.69%. Nine hundredths of a percentage point buys you double the top end. If you already run a bonus chip and it has started to feel small, this is the sensible step rather than jumping to Huge Reds.
One segment
Huge Reds — the ceiling, and its price
One segment in 53. Multipliers from 10x to 500x, hauled out with cranes and helicopters, with the reveal deliberately drawn out.
It carries the worst return in the game at 95.17% and the tightest stake ceiling at 500. Backed alone it produces roughly 52 losing rounds for every one that opens, which over a 90-round hour means one or two appearances if the average behaves — and plenty of hours where it does not show at all.
Across a typical 90-round hour, expect around seven Lil’ Blues, three or four Big Oranges and one or two Huge Reds — on average, and only on routes you actually backed. A dry hour with none of them is completely ordinary.
See the bonus rounds for yourself
Evolution runs Ice Fishing at licensed operators worldwide, from 0.10 a round.
Wording
“Guaranteed win” is doing a lot of work
Every bonus round pays something, which is why they are often described as guaranteed wins. The phrase is accurate and close to useless.
A 3x catch on Lil’ Blues after you have carried a bonus chip for twenty rounds is a guaranteed win and a losing sequence at the same time. What matters is the size of the catch against everything you staked getting there, and on that measure the bonus routes are priced to return less than the plain Leaf bet sitting next to them.