I had a simple plan for this afternoon. First I was going to head off to the Guadalhorce to see if I could fool a few fish with some simple nymphs I tied up yesterday afternoon. After that I was going to drop in to Café Europa for a cafe con leche.

There is nothing much to the little nymphs I use. I tie them on smallish (size 14) barbless grub hooks and they seem quite palatable to the barbel and carp. You could do a lot of fooling around trying different patterns but I tend not to. I have a lot of confidence in these things and stick to them out of a mixture of laziness and brand loyalty.

On the river the carp were camped out in the slow flows and the barbel were holding in fast water. I was quite surprised at how fast a current the barbel would occupy. At first glance you might dismiss water like this but if you watch it carefully you will find the odd tail fin break the surface and, when your eye is in, make out a good number of fish in water which is only a few inches deep.Catching them is a different matter. The nymph whizzes by at a rate of knots and it is tricky enough to hook up with anything. Despite this I managed to hook a couple of good barbel in these shallow rapids but both came off in the end. The barbel I did manage to land came were unseen and came from the water flowing into a deep pool.

The carp were more straightforward and I managed to catch four. They were nosing in and around the nearside margin occasionally disappearing into the grass at the river´s edge.

All in all it was a fine afternoon. Unfortunately I managed to get myself pretty wet and muddy and so I decided against the café con leche. At Café Europa they are used to me popping in looking pretty scruffy but today I was worse than usual. I was plastered in mud and soaked up to the middle of my shorts. Frankly, looked like I had just just lifted a manhole cover and crawled out of a sewer. Even I have a little pride. Not much maybe, but a little.

I caught four of these things - all on the same little nymph.

I caught four of these things – all on the same little nymph.

These are the nymphs which I use. Today all of the fish were taken on one and I didn´t need any of the spares.

This is the little team of nymphs sitting on the euro coin which, according to the original plan, would have bought me a cafe con leche at Café Europa.