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There are so many factors at play here that you need to read another book - Striped Bass by Nick Karas. It's not the bible but it has the most info ever assembled into the biology, migration habits, and stock assesments compiled into one book.
The decline was a combination of overfishing by everyone - comms & recs, high pollution, low size limits, and a down cycle in the fish that caused the stocks to crash.
A lot of those guys you read about probably would have done things differently if they new what was going to happen and things might have been different if it were managed differently.
As for current fishery management: it is broken into 2 main sections, coastal and the Va, Md, & Potomac fisheries. The rules and regs are far different between these.
The overall fishery is in decent shape - but getting better or worse is what's in debate. Also many (myself included) feel that more needs to be done for the big fish.
Lots of demand for bass meat. Many restaraunts use it, sometimes as Striped Bass, but also called other things too from sea bass to whatever...
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