recommendations for web/db connection pooling or DBD::Gofer reviews

When traffic to our PostgreSQL-backed website spikes, the first resource
we see being exhausted is the DB slots on the master server (currently
set to about 400).

I expect that as new Apache/mod_perl children are being put to us, they
are creating new database connections.

I'm interested in recommendations to funnel more of that traffic through
fewer DB slots, if that's possible. (We could also consider increasing
the handles available, since the DB server has some CPU and memory to
spare).

I'm particularly interested in review of DBD::Gofer, which seems like it
would help with this in our Perl application:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBI/lib/DBD/Gofer.pm

I realize it has limitations, like "no transactions", but I think we
would still able to use it selectively in our application.

Mark