mysql too many connections - too many sleeping threads?

Question

I am getting this error from a mysql database

error connecting: Timeout expired.  The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool.  This may have occurred because all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached.

I have a website and console application talking to the database but i certainly dont have 100 concurrent connections! I did a showprocesslist query and found about 10 connections with a command of SLEEP and time of about 16000 seconds. There wasn't 100 connections.

I am using subsonic data provider to talk to the database and i believe this closes database connections immediately and doesnt leave them hanging so this isn't the culprit.

I restarted mysql server and my console application that talks to the database and it seems to be working ok but naturally I can't have the either console/website application crashing like this. Looking at the error log this error seems to be coming up

Please could you advice on anything I can do to find out what is going on and how i can fix it

EDIT: I have looked into this more and it appears it is subsonic/mysql issue. I have tried the recommended fix in the link below by closing the connection in a finally block but nothing closes the connection...

   Dim sp As StoredProcedure = SPs.GetLastGPSDataForAllVehicles(customerID)
            Dim reader As IDataReader
            Try
                reader = sp.GetReader
                MyBase.Load(reader)
            Catch ex As Exception
            Finally
                reader.Dispose()
                reader = Nothing
                sp.Command.ToDbCommand().Connection.Close()

            End Try

I have no idea how to force the connection to close.

thanks a lot