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.
Crane flies are significantly larger than mosquitoes and don’t swarm. Swarms near a lake are very typical of midges who look superficially like mosquitoes.