Anglers get more fish, less litter
Norm Price is on a crusade that has two goals: help fellow anglers catch more fish, and recycle millions of discarded beer bottle caps from bars and restaurants throughout North America.
Price is the Canadian inventor of the bottle-cap lure, a beer bottle cap pinched together with tiny ball bearings inside, and a hook attached to one end. The rattle of the lure’s steel bearings, and its shiny, colorful finish, can cause an unsuspecting lunker to strike faster than an angry Teamster, he said.
The lures are catching on with anglers throughout Canada and the United States, said Price, a fishing and hunting guide in Sherbrooke, Quebec, who has sold nearly 100,000 lures over the past five years. He now hopes to persuade major brewers to sponsor a contest that would award cash to people landing big fish with his bottle-cap lures.
So far, though, brewing companies aren’t taking the bait.
Brewers “spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on ridiculous marketing campaigns,” said Price, owner of the Bottle Cap Lure Co. “In this case, where you can help save the environment, why wouldn’t they participate?”
That hasn’t discouraged Price, who couches his plans to make a buck with pronouncements on battling the global menace of bottle-cap pollution.
“I don’t know how many times I go fishing and see bottle caps on the bottom of the river,” Price said. Recycling those caps from litter to lures “could happen all over the world,” he said.
Price fashions his lures from whatever bottle caps he can scrounge. His “six-pack” of lures — which sells for $35 at www.bottlecaplure.com — features a half-dozen popular brands: Miller High Life, Miller Genuine Draft, Budweiser, Coors Light, Molson Canadian and Labatt Blue.
The brewers of those brands haven’t given Price written permission to use their caps — something he regards as a technicality. Along with the Web site, Price also sells the lures in more than 100 sporting goods stores, bait shops and other retailers throughout Canada.
“I’ve had brewing companies tell me I don’t have a license to do this,” Price said. “I’ve basically come back and said, ‘In your face. I don’t need a license to recycle your trash.’ “
“After review, Anheuser-Busch declined Mr. Price’s business proposal,” according to a statement issued by the St. Louis-based company. “The product does not fit with the image of Anheuser-Busch’s brands.”
At Miller, “We’re always looking for new and innovative ways to connect with legal drinking age consumers, but at this time we are not pursuing any association with the Bottle Cap Lure Company,” said spokesman Scott Bussen.
Pittsburgh Brewing Co., however, is in hook, line and sinker.
Pittsburgh, which sells mainly in Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, is paying Price to produce 1,000 to 3,000 lures with caps featuring the Iron City Beer logo, said Tony Ferraro, vice president of sales and marketing.
Pittsburgh Brewing plans to distribute the lures as promotional giveaways in 2005, Ferraro said. A lot of “regular guy” beer drinkers, he said, also fish.
The concept dawned on Price as he was drinking a beer. He took the bottle cap and bent it together, indulging a longtime habit. He nonchalantly tossed it on to a table next to some fishing hooks and lures. He was then struck by the similarity in shape between the tools of his trade and the distorted cap.
Price decided to create a lure. He then went with a fishing buddy to a nearby river, and promptly caught a big brown trout. When his friend told Price that it was a fluke, he cast again. This time, Price caught a nice rainbow trout.
His company now has about 30 employees, mostly college students working part time. The bottle caps — his main raw material — come from local bars and restaurants, which provide them for free.
“Beer and fishing have always gone hand in hand,” Price said.