Backstage notes
Read the panels in order and the bonus round makes sense fast: fish are money symbols first and paying symbols second, and only a fisherman WILD landing on the same board can bank what they're showing. That's the entire logic behind Reel Kingdom's random rescue features — a fish-money spawn when there's a wild but no fish, a hook pull when there's fish but no wild, a bazooka transform that reshuffles the board around a lone fisherman.
The multiplier climb rewards patience over a single lucky spin: four collected wilds push the level to 2x, eight to 3x, twelve or more locks it at a flat 10x on every fish value collected afterwards. Stack that against modifiers picked before the round even starts, up to five at once, and a purchased round at 100x stake can land in a very different place to a scatter-triggered one.
Because volatility sits almost entirely in that 2x-to-5000x money spread rather than base-game line pays, expect flat stretches outside the feature. The 5000x total-stake cap keeps the ceiling fixed and known — the round simply stops the instant it's touched.