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In from the troubled Atlantic one afternoon sped a blue-check homing pigeon. Down over the New Jersey strand it wheeled, dropped to rest in a loft in Manasquan. From a capsule attached to its leg a burnished, businesslike youth extracted a penciled message, scanned it, then hustled to his telephone. In no time the U. S. Coast Guard launch 'Squan Beach was scuffing its way through the breakers for a point "two and a half hours' run southeast of Manasquan Inlet." In considerably less than two and a half hours, the 30-foot fishing boat Ridgewise, 15 miles offshore with a party of eight and a conked motor, was securely in tow.

In the last two Jersey shore fishing seasons (May through October), 17-year-old Pigeon Tycoon Joel Parker Jr. has turned a pretty penny. The squat Jersey stink-pots that take thousands of anglers to the offshore fishing grounds are not apt to be equipped with radios. But every skipper in the fleet has known times when a message to shore would have come in handy.

Four years ago the Florida deep-sea fleet began carrying homing pigeons. Primarily the birds were for emergency, but many a pigeon flew back to Miami Beach with the time-worn query: "How's fishin'?"

Not far behind Florida was Manasquan's Joel Parker. Last year he began to work the pigeons he had been raising as a hobby, charged 50-c- a bird a day. This season Joel has been renting between 15 and 35 of his 75 birds every day, furnishing coops, capsules and message paper, has thus far had ten 50-c- S O Ss. Best businessman in last June's graduating class at Manasquan High School, he now expects his flock to put him through West Virginia Business College in Bluefield, W. Va., where he goes as a freshman this month. His father will run the business in his absence. Like most private corporations, Joel Parker keeps his balance sheet to himself, but best-informed guesses set his operating gross to date at well over $2,000.

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