I'm half-ass allergic to mosquito bites. If I get more than 10 or 12 I get dizzy, labored breathing and gotta get out of Dodge immediately.
Skin-so-soft is worthless. I bought into that story once.
It does work on gnats, but not as good as
OFF! Active in the pump bottle.
I keep 3 or 4 bottles of that stuff around for all occasions and it works great. It even keeps sweat flies off of me when I'm mowing grass at the ball field, and that's the main reason I use it.
I used to battle mosquitos at my last home (the farm) and managed to control them by keeping water dishes, buckets, and any standing water dried up. It was a "house rule" that a bucket was to be turned upside-down at all times.
Promoting bats with a
bat house works wonders. A few of them carefully deployed will keep enough bats that you'll be stylin.
If you have one of those slackwater Florida ditches behind your house, you're kinda out of luck. A gallon of malathion dumped in there every now and again will help, but it depends how much water is coming in.
The trick with skeeters is that you have to battle the cycle on all fronts. If you kill the larvae with malathion in the water, have bats pounding them in the air, and manage the water holes where they breed, you can honestly pound them into submission. At least I can here in PA.