NEW SPINNERBAIT BITES HARD; FISHING DENTIST CREATES TOOL USING FAMILIAR MATERIAL.

Byline: Jim Matthews Special to the Daily News

It's a root-canal tool and a fishing lure.

A Tulsa, Okla., dentist has incorporated the nickel-titanium used to make dental files into a new spinnerbait that will take a beating and keep on fishing.

The material doesn't bend out of shape like standard spinnerbait frames that bass anglers constantly tweak to ensure they swim properly. The marriage of dentistry and angling has landed Ben Johnson a new career.

He used to spend a lot of days down in the mouth. Literally. Filling cavities, making caps, pulling teeth and doing root canals. Now Johnson spends a lot of time pursuing different largemouths - bass, not patients.

The common denominator in the equation is nickel-titanium, an extremely strong and elastic material originally developed for the Navy to be lightweight and totally rustproof. Nickel-titanium wire can be bent into a full circle and spring back to its original shape without breaking. You've seen the commercials for eyeglass frames made of the stuff.

Johnson originally used the material to design the perfect tool for root canals, making the files he employed previously - files that were difficult to use and painful for his patients - obsolete.

The light bulb in his head flashed brightly one day when Johnson was bass fishing with his spinnerbait-fanatic friend who was demonstrating how to tune a standard stainless-steel-wire spinnerbait - bending it back into shape so it would swim correctly.

``I asked him, `Would it be an advantage if you didn't have to do that all the time?' And he said, `You bet it would.' Well, it didn't take long to make a few prototypes,'' Johnson explained.

Nickel-titanium wire is expensive compared to stainless steel and is difficult to work with, but the resulting spinnerbait will last at least 20 times longer than one made with stainless-steel wire, according to industry insiders.

Professional bass angler Ricky Green of Arkadelphia, Ark., caught more than 100 bass in tournaments on a single nickel-titanium wire spinnerbait. Another angler landed more than 50 Brazilian peacock bass before breaking the lure.

Johnson said that he and his fishing compatriot found that standard wire spinnerbait frames will break after being bent back and forth four or five times, while nickel-titanium would bend and spring back to shape more than 900 times before it broke. It was the better mousetrap and Johnson figured anglers would want the new bait - and would be willing to foot the bill to fetch them.

The retail price of Terminator Titanium Spinnerbaits, as the dentist's new Tulsa-based company is called, is nearly $9. Many spinnerbaits are $3 or less; the top-priced competitors' lures cost half that of Johnson's creation.

Will anglers pay the price for the durability and design features brought about by advanced technology?

``No one thought most anglers would pay the extra price for graphite rods,'' Johnson said. ``But if it gives you an advantage, you buy it.'' The maker's story might also help sell the angler, Johnson said. He hopes bass fishermen are amused to find that a dentist who came up with a better instrument to perform root canals also designed a high-tech spinnerbait. He's gone from pulling teeth to ripping lips; only the mouths have changed.

``The fishing part (of the business) is a whole lot more fun doing research for than the dentistry part,'' Johnson said.

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PHOTO (Color) Nickel-titanium in dental tools, right, is used in frames of spinnerbaits.

Terri Thuente/Daily News