I’ve been meaning to have a look for Venus in the afternoons as I though it’d be very possible to see it when there’s still quite a lot of daylight. I use the SkyView app on my phone so I can very quickly narrow down where to look and after about a minute I finally found Venus at 5pm yesterday.
The photo isn’t too brilliant, being just a phone camera, but you can just see the few white-ish pixels that are Venus.

Years ago I remember doing the same thing but managed to find it at about 3pm, obviously also in winter but also when my eyesight was better. :)
I’ll keep trying to see if I can spot it earlier in the day.