If evince is not in continuous mode, the following happens when I use find: the list of hits appears in the side bar, but clicking on a hit in the side bar will not jump the viewer to the page and position of the hit (unless the hit happens to be on the page currently in view).

Find should work in non-continuous mode just as it does in continuous mode.

I often use evince to peruse pdfs of math books. Since these are typically hundreds of pages, I use non-continuous mode (because otherwise the scrollbar is not useful for small movements of the text). And I use find frequently as well for obvious reasons. So I currently have to toggle continuous mode each time I want to search and after.