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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, including Milwaukee's Miller Brewing Co., to sponsor a contest that would award cash to people landing big fish with his bottle-cap lures. So far, though, Miller and other big brewers 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 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.'"

The three largest U.S. brewers, Anheuser-Busch Inc., Miller Brewing and Adolph Coors Co., haven't threatened to sue Price for using their caps. But they haven't exactly rushed to sign up as sponsors.

"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.