Sweat produces lactic acid, which at close range smells like fresh-baked bread to a hungry mosquito. Well, this is a lousy option but carbon dioxide can attract many biting bugs. Avoid scented soaps. Some pests, like ticks, will wait on bushes to ambush their victims. They react to movement.
Timing is everything.
Mosquitoes go on feeding frenzies in the early morning and at dusk. Time your activities and repellent preparedness accordingly. There are also strategies for making yourself less appetizing to our primary insect enemy, the female mosquito, as she buzzes in search of the juicy red nectar we know as blood. As propagators, mosquitoes are efficiency experts. Each meal a female mosquito sucks up is used to create a yolk that produces up to 100 eggs.