VANCOUVER -- A group of Prince George, B.C., fishers are breathing a sigh of relief after a grizzly bear approached and lunged at them during a recent fishing trip.

The men were standing on a bridge overlooking the Babine River when the bear unexpectedly came up from the river bed and waddled across the bridge where they were standing. The incident was caught on video.

“She stopped and just lunged at us, just to sort of show that she knew we were there, and she was not to be messed with,” said Jay Dupras, who’s fished at the location for 25 years.

The close call came in the late afternoon, between 4 and 5 p.m., shortly after Dupras and his group had arrived at the bridge to scout out a fishing spot on the river banks for the next day.

“The grizzly was walking along the beach and it climbed the bank up to where the bridge was,” he said.

Under normal circumstances, Dupras said he would have tried to deter the bear from coming onto the bridge, which could have forced it to cross the water at river-level. However, on this day, there were wildlife photographers on the side of the bridge that the bear entered from, and they let the bear walk past them.

“The photographers allowed the bear sort of to come towards them. And they allowed it to pass them on the bridge, which I don't understand,” he said.

It’s the closest encounter Dupras has ever had with a bear, despite seeing grizzly bears regularly while out fishing in that exact area of the Baibine River Corridor Provincial Park. 

Dupras said he even recognized this specific bear – which he’s named “Half-n-half” because it has light hair on its body and darker hair on its legs and arms.

In previous sightings he’s been able to keep a safe distance from the local grizzlies. But in this instance, he was figuratively stuck between a rock and a hard place. Seeing that the bear hadn’t attacked the photographers as it went past them, Dupras and his group huddled together and stood still.

“As the bear was coming … we just grouped together, the five of us just grouped together and stood as still as possible watching this bear, come down towards us, we just thought we would just stand there because if we went off the bridge at all, it gives the bear more room to follow us, right?” he said.

As the bear lunged at them, the men yelled at it and it backed off, and continued on its way across the bridge.

The park is a hot spot for bears. The B.C. park’s website warns that the area is “regularly used by grizzly bears,” and that visitors should be aware that “the chance of a dangerous bear encounter here is very high.”

“Serious injury or death from a mauling is a possibility,” it continues.

Normally, the bears cross the river at water-level, and avoid the car and logging truck traffic on the bridge, Dupras said.

“For the bears to go across the bridge is not a normal situation, which is why it sort of caught us off guard a little bit,” he said.

In fact, the bridge is normally a safe spot from which Dupras can watch the bears and avoid a close encounter.

“Where we fish there, there's bears there every year, and they travel up and down the river and you know, we're always watching for them,” he said.

In other instances, as soon as a bear is in sight, Dupras and his crew move out of the way.

“We gather up, we go up on the bridge because that's our safe spot. And then the bears just travel through the area that we're fishing,” he said.

“It takes them about 15 or 20 minutes to pound through the area and then they just continue on the way. We've had up to 11 grizzly sightings in one day,” he said.