This is how we do it with an OO LWP wrapper we use, hope it helps:

sub new {
    my $class = shift;
    my %args = @_;
    my $self = { _ua => LWP::Custom->new() };
    bless $self, $class;
    # check for passed args to modify defaults
    $self->{cookie_dir} = $args{cookie_dir} ? $args{cookie_dir} : '/tm
+p';
    # pretend to be IE6 by default ;-)
    $self->{agent} = $args{agent} ? $args{agent} : 'Mozilla/4.0 (compa
+tible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0; .NET CLR 1.0.3705)';
    # use a 30 secont timout by default
    $self->{timeout} = $args{timeout} ? $args{timeout} : 30;
    # meta refresh threshold
    $self->{meta_threshold} = $args{meta_threshold} ? $args{meta_thres
+hold} : 15;
    # support cookies, first make a unique cookie file for this instan
+ce
    my ( $fh, $name ) = get_tempfile ( $self->{cookie_dir}, 'cookie' )
+;
    # as we have created the file we need to make it look like a cooki
+e file
    # so that LWP does not winge about the missing header
    print $fh "#LWP-Cookies-1.0\n";
    close $fh;
    $self->{cookie_file} = "$self->{cookie_dir}/$name";
    # set up the cookie jar
    $self->{_cookie_jar} = HTTP::Cookies->new(
                                        file     => $self->{cookie_fil
+e},
                                        autosave => 0,
                                        ignore_discard => 1
    );
    $self->{_cookie_jar}->load( $self->{cookie_file} );
    $self->{_ua}->agent( $self->{agent} );
    $self->{_ua}->timeout( $self->{timeout} );
  return $self;
}

# this is the simplified guts of the fetch method:

    my $request = HTTP::Request->new( $method, $url );
    # this call can choke, an example is shopping.aol.co.uk which meta
+ 
    # refreshes to aol://1722:ukshopping causing this call to explode
    eval{$self->{_cookie_jar}->add_cookie_header($request)};
    my $response = $self->{_ua}->request($request);
    $self->{_cookie_jar}->extract_cookies($response);
    $self->{_cookie_jar}->save( $self->{cookie_file} );
    $obj->{content} = $response->content;
    $obj->{code} = $response->code;
    $obj->{message}  = $response->message;
    $obj->{title} = $response->headers->title;



# we customize the LWP::UserAgent class to suit our needs
package LWP::Custom;

use base 'LWP::UserAgent';

# add a set_basic_credentials method, using a closure to remember
{
    my ( $username, $password );
    sub set_basic_credentials{ ( $username, $password ) = @_[1..2] }
    sub get_basic_credentials{ $username, $password };
}
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