I’ve had to deal with huge swarms of these things every summer for the few years I’ve lived a mile away from a lake. I assumed they were mosquitoes until recently.
Is it some kind of midge fly? How can you tell? If I were to make an uneducated guess, I’d say it’s not a mosquito because there’s not a straight proboscis.
BTW, you don’t need a lake to breed them. Any standing water will do. Rainwater barrels, cow troughs, ditches…
In fact they don’t like lakes. Too much movement and predator.