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What you are just describing in your above post, only seeing a few individuals and not a 'shower', is often the reality of the situation. A real 'shower' as most would think of it is called a storm event in meteor watching! They don't happen often, unfortunately. From years spent watching the eta Aquarids in particular, one of the better showers for us south of the equator, its more like "there's one coming from the radiant....(wait five minutes)... ok, theres another...(30 seconds)....two faints ones ....(wait another 5 minutes)...yay! a big one!...(two minutes)...and another... " So there is often a lot of waiting about and not seeing much. When you collate that info and look back at it, it looks impressive compared to a non-shower background rate of sporadics but the showers themselves still require a lot of patience, even though you can be usually be sure of a bit more action than usual.
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