This thread has taken a wrong direction.
The problem is not in that your edge is polished, the problem is that neither S30V in your Spyderco Sage, nor M4 in the Spyderco Gayle Bradley should be honed on regular stones or stropped with Flitz and alike aluminium-oxide based compounds.
These knife steels must be sharpened with CBN or diamonds, and honed with diamonds.
Have a look at SEM images of the premium knife blade on this website:
https://scienceofsharp.com/2019/11/03/carbides-in-maxamet/
The above SEM images clearly show that when we sharpen a wear-resistant knife steel using anything but diamonds and CBN, it is not possible to polish those wear resistant carbides sharp, as we only abrade the steel matrix around them, burnishing it to the edge, and eventually getting a sharp strip of steel lacking in wear-resistant carbides that won't last long. As we start cutting with this edge, the sharp steel apex quickly turns into a
relatively dull edge made of big unpolished carbides.
This is the only reason why your Spyderco Sage in S30V performed worse than a mainstream s/s knife.
A dull knife has over 1 micron edge, and the unpolished vanadium carbides average 1-2 microns in the best CPM knife steels.
Wear-resistant knives have special sharpening requirements. Sharpen them with CBN and diamonds and they will take a razor edge that will outperform a mainstream knife by x 10s times.