I'm a scrub who uses the catalog, I don't have this problem.
Welp it all depends on the generals popularity and how much time has passed since the last bump I guess.
Other way it would be a shot in the dark to try and guess exactly in which page the general is..
If you skip one page (1,3,5,7..) you have 50% chance of getting the thread looking at only 50% of the pages
Skipping 2 pages (1,4,7..) your chances of finding the thread are too small.
Jumping to random pages just makes it even harder to find the thread.
The right thing to do would be to calculate how much threads where created afther the last bump of the desired thread and also how many older threads where bumped.
With this info you can calculate exactly at which page the thread is in the current time.