Behind him, the dirt parking lot at Lattin's Cove was filled with cars, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks, each hitched to an empty boat trailer.

In front of Santoro, Forty Acre Mountain Road was lined with more trailer-towing vehicles, their drivers hoping to back down the concrete ramp and put boats and personal watercraft into Candlewood Lake without paying the $10 to $75 fee charged by town-owned and private launches.

Time and again, Santoro had to tell drivers that the lot was at capacity, and they couldn't get in until someone else left.

"One guy goes out, another comes in," he said.

On the first weekend of summer, the surface of the 8.4-square-mile lake was dotted with pleasure craft, including powerboats towing skiers, people out for a summer afternoon cruise, party boats and the occasional kayaker. But not quite as many, lake veterans said, as would have been out there had temperatures on the cloudless day been a few degrees higher.

"It was quiet early this morning, but it's starting to pick up now," said Carl Lovisolo, of Derby, who along with John Hatfield, of Seymour, was on the lake Sunday for a Housatonic Bassmasters fishing tournament.

By early afternoon, the tournament was over, and Hatfield and Lovisolo were about to pull out of the lot, which would make room for others eager to get out on the water.

"This is my third time out this year, but the first on the fresh water," said Dan Longo, a Dutchess County, N.Y., resident, as he put his powerboat into the water. "I'm hoping the lake will be nice and calm."

It wasn't quite as busy at the Nina Marina, a public docking area at Poet's Landing, a condominium development on the Danbury lakeshore.

"This is a hidden gem, It's the quietest marina on the lake," manager John Lewis said. Although dock space is available, the lack of parking precludes the use of the boat-launch area by those who just want to spend the day on the water.

"People come out in the evening and the middle of the day, but most of them here avoid the lake on the weekend," Lewis said.

This year, DEEP is limiting the size of boats on the lake to a maximum of 26 feet in length, responding to years of complaints by other lake users.

The new law won't stop people who have previously used bigger boats on Candlewood from doing so this year. They were grandfathered in, and are required to display stickers that exempt them enforcement action by environmental conservation police and the lake patrol.

Santoro said he has seen longer boats without stickers come in to the launch in the past few weeks, and has told boaters they were risking a ticket if they put them in the water. But as a seasonal employee, Santoro doesn't have any enforcement authority, and at least a few large boat owners told him they "would take their chances" he said.

Kayakers David and James Mager, of Brookfield, said they favor the new restrictions, but they said that for the most part, other boaters they encountered were courteous.