The bit about the River Dove forming the border between Derbyshire and Staffordshire is true; it does so for much of its length. It's also true (according to this BBC 'trailer' for a programme broadcast on Radio 4 in 2003 to celebrate the 350th anniversary of the publication of The Compleat Angler) that Izaak Walton spent many hours fishing for trout on the Dove, often in the company of his friend Charles Cotton. But to say that the Dove is immortalised in The Compleat Angler is something of an exaggeration, to say the least; it's mentioned only twice!
In Chapter 6, Walton writes of the grayling (also known, he says, as the umber) that "there be many of these fishes in the delicate river Dove". And in Chapter 19 he quotes "one of Mr. Drayton's Sonnets", which includes the line "The Peak, her Dove, whose banks so fertile be". The poem (which is not actually a sonnet as it has three verses of four lines each) is essentially a eulogy to the rivers of England, and also mentions the Thames, the Severn, the Trent, the Avon, the Dee, the Ouse, the Medway, the Tame, the Tweed, the Willy (?!) and the Lea.
And that's it!
Although born in Stafford, Izaak Walton moved to London in his teens to train as a linen draper. (This trade came under the Ironmongers' Company, so Walton is often described as an ironmonger.) At this time the Lea, which flows through east London and into the Thames, seems to have been his favoured river. In later life he returned to Staffordshire and sometimes visited Charles Cotton in his fishing house on the Dove; but as we have seen, he barely mentioned this specifically in The Compleat Angler.
What can probably be said however is that the Dove was made famous through its association with Izaak Walton, the author of The Compleat Angler.
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